


Pocket Full of Soul

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Soul Eater, 逆転裁判 | Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Bruises, Childhood Friends, Childhood Trauma, Concussions, Grief/Mourning, Hospitals, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Character Death, Nosebleed, Partnership
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-11-06 23:42:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 24
Words: 51,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11046792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "Death Weapon Meister Academy is much, much bigger than Phoenix was prepared for." Phoenix has a plan for his path through the DWMA: become a Death Weapon with the help of his two best friends. When life overturns his expectations, he has to find another path to follow; but with enough change and a little luck, he might end up where he wanted to be from the start.





	1. Introduction

Death Weapon Meister Academy is much, much bigger than Phoenix was prepared for.

He’s been nervous since he got on the plane, with a kiss from his mother and a pat on the head from his father to see him off. It’s supposed to be a short flight, just a matter of an hour or so once they’re in the air; but to Phoenix every minute feels like a lifetime, as even the view of the ground vanishing to clouds below him barely distracts from the thud of panic rising to tighten against his chest. He’s never felt this alone before in all his life, and what sounded like an exciting adventure when he managed his first partial weapon transformation now seems like an impossible responsibility against his shoulders, and the academy that seemed like such an elite structure on the glossy pages of the brochure seems now like a jail for those cursed, as he is, with the shape of a potentially dangerous weapon inside them. Phoenix tips his head against the window of the plane, feels the air chill as ice against the other side; and he shuts his eyes tight, and tries not to cry.

It’s midmorning when he arrives and disembarks from the small plane that brought him to the outskirts of the city before following the signs through the winding streets to the front of the Academy itself. The school looms over the rest of the buildings, houses and shops and offices all dwarfed by its imposing presence; Phoenix feels more lost than ever, even with the scattering of other children his age and older that are converging on the front of the school. He ducks his head, feeling horribly exposed in his own uncertainty in the situation, and climbs the stairs with a stoic determination to avoid eye contact with anyone else around him until he makes it to his classroom.

It’s hard to find where he’s going. The Academy is sprawling inside, formed of long curving hallways that wind around the whole of the school before they provide anything like a sign, and Phoenix can’t find a map no matter how he looks. Finally he catches the sleeve of a passerby, a boy about his age with a shock of light brown hair and wide eyes that make him look perpetually startled; but the other just grins easy at Phoenix’s question, and gestures down the hall behind him with a vague “It’s that way, dude, can’t miss it!” before turning to continue on to wherever he’s going. Phoenix heads down the indicated route with a focus that is starting to become jaw-clenchingly desperate; and then he realizes, after passing almost a dozen classrooms, that the numbers are counting up instead of down, and he has to backtrack all the way to where he began. By the time he’s rounded the corner to correct his initial mistake he’s jogging, trembling with the beginnings of panic at being late to his very first class as a weapon and feeling so stressed it’s hard even to fill his lungs with air. Finally he finds the room with _1-D_ printed in neat letters above a shut classroom door, and Phoenix lets out a gust of an exhale so intense with relief it’s almost a sob as he reaches to push the door open.

The classroom is full of students already. He really was running late -- almost every head in the room swivels to look at him, dozens of eyes fix on him as if to weigh and measure every part where he stands. There’s a whole range of ages -- a few Phoenix’s age, most older, one girl who looks even younger -- but in a group as they are they become a single, unified wall of judgment, of dark eyes staring to pin him in place in the doorway before he’s even stepped through the entrance.

“Uh,” Phoenix says, because he feels like he has to offer something in response to all those fixed stares. “Hello.”

This doesn’t get him the greeting he had hoped for or even a nod of welcome from any of the array of students in front of him. They just keep staring, watching like they’re waiting for something, until Phoenix finally thinks to ask “Is this the class for new students?” just in case he’s wandered into the wrong room by mistake.

“Yeah,” one of the older girls says, her voice enough to separate her from the faceless crowd, even if just for a moment. Phoenix looks to her, feeling a surge of relief run through him; but there’s no smile on her face, just blank attention as she gazes at him. “What are you?”

Phoenix blinks. “I’m a...student?” he tries.

“ _Obviously_ ,” another classmate, a boy this time, younger and farther back so it’s harder to see his face, so his words seem to come almost from the classroom itself. “What _are_ you, though? Weapon or meister?”

“Where’s your pin?” cuts in another boy, his tone accusing; and it’s only then that Phoenix notices the white rectangles pinned to the chests of every other student in the room, each marked out with the neat text of _Meister_ or _Weapon_ depending on the student.

“Oh,” he says, feeling his face heat with embarrassment as he realizes his mistake. “I’m--”

“You were almost late,” the first girl says, her tone still as cool as her expression but the words delivered with the vicious speed of disregard. “Couldn’t you even make it to your first class on time? Don’t you care about being here at all?”

“Are you sure this _is_ your class?” another says; Phoenix can’t tell, anymore, if it’s one of the students that has already spoken, they’re blending into each other and reforming into that single, judgmental crowd again. “Are you even supposed to be here at all?”

Phoenix blinks, trying very hard to fight back the tears that are prickling at his lashes, now, burning bright behind his eyes no matter how hard he tries to fight them back. “I am,” he says, even though he wants nothing so much as to back out of the room and walk all the way back home if he has to. “I _am_ , I’m a weapon, I--”

“Stop that.” It’s a clear voice from the side of the room, one Phoenix hasn’t heard before; there’s the faintest hint of an accent on the vowels, something almost European about the sounds on the other’s tongue. Phoenix flinches as he turns to look for the speaker, assuming the judgment is intended for him; but when he finally sees the owner of the voice, a boy his height standing against the far wall, the other is looking at the rest of the crowd, his creased forehead and set frown forming the structure of a defense for Phoenix instead of further abuse. “He’s new, there’s no need to gang up on him his first day.”

Phoenix is half-expecting the rest of the crowd to turn on this new speaker, to descend upon him with all the petulant disdain only a classroom full of young teenagers can attain. But they fall silent instead, some of the older ones actually ducking their heads to scuff their shoes against the floor, and in the end there’s only one who finds voice to actually protest the other boy’s judgment. “Just because you grew up here…”

“That’s true,” the other boy says, his chin tilting up fractionally higher. “Do they not teach you manners where you’re from?” The lone speaker in the crowd retreats, cowed into surrender by the edge on the other’s words or maybe just by the absolute self-confidence in his tone, and the other turns away from the crowd, dismissing them as easily as that as he fixes his gaze on Phoenix instead.

“Come here,” he says, and gestures to beckon Phoenix closer. “I’ll get an extra tag for you.” And he’s moving as quickly as that, turning towards the front of the classroom and walking forward without any hesitation in whether or not Phoenix actually will follow him.

Phoenix does, of course. It’s better than standing in the doorway, at least, certainly less intimidating than trying to strike up a conversation with one of the nameless faces from the crowd; at least Phoenix’s unexpected savior seems friendly, if a little intimidating in his reserve.

“You’re a weapon, you said?” the other boy asks as they draw up to the front of the room, Phoenix pulled along into the sacred space by the teacher’s podium by the other’s unflinching confidence. “What’s your name?”

Phoenix clears his throat in an attempt to bring his tone back to normal from the high strain of panic, but his voice still cracks in the middle of his name to give it a weird sideways slant on his tongue. “Phoenix Wright.”

The other boy glances up from behind the podium. He has pale eyes, a silvery grey only a shade or two lighter than the steely shade of his hair. “Phoenix Wright?” he repeats, and looks back down as he draws open a drawer from the weight of the podium. “Did you make that up yourself?”

Phoenix’s forehead creases in confusion. “What?” He shakes his head. “No. My parents named me.”

“Ah.” The other boy’s attention is fully fixed in front of him, now; he doesn’t look back up at Phoenix. “I thought you might have picked out an Academy name for yourself. Some students decide to do that, when they join.”

“Oh.” Phoenix remembers some reference to that, vaguely, in the shining pages of the brochure his parents went over with him; it had slipped his memory entirely in the chaos of the morning. “No. I’ve always been Phoenix.”

“That’s fine too,” the other says. “I’m keeping my name as well. It’s part of my family’s heritage.” He sounds proud, for a moment, his tone going softer and warm with something part affection and part awe; in the next moment it’s gone, as he drops back into a businesslike tone. “You’re a weapon, you said?”

Phoenix ducks his head into a nod before realizing the other isn’t watching him. “Uh. Yeah. Yes. I’m a weapon.”

“Good.” The other boy straightens from behind the desk, reaching out to offer a white pin to match the ones the other students are wearing. Phoenix takes it tentatively from his hand.

“You wear it on your chest,” the other boy says. “Like this” as he turns to face Phoenix and lifts a hand to tap against the badge pinned to his own shirt. “So meisters and weapons can partner up with each other.”

“Oh.” Phoenix closes his hand around the pin. “Okay.”

“It’s not that important for now,” the other boy says, and reaches to push the drawer of the podium closed again. “We’re just doing introductions today. But people will want to know, until you have a meister partner picked out to work with.”

“Okay.” Phoenix ducks his head to look at the pin in his hand again; and then back up, as he struggles desperately to find the voice to say something more coherent than the one-word responses he’s been offering. “You’re a weapon too?”

“That’s right,” the other boy says. “Like my father.” He’s taken on that proud tone again; and he’s smiling, his eyes as soft as his tone. “I’m going to find a great partner here.”

Phoenix stares at him for a minute. There’s something reassuring about the expression on the other’s face, something comforting in his complete confidence in the room and in his position, like he knows exactly where he comes from and where he’s going. For Phoenix, feeling painfully uprooted and adrift, it’s like much-needed sunlight on winter-cold skin, like an example of what he could be, here, maybe, if he let himself expand into the possibility of his role.

“What’s your name?” he blurts, the words coming from him too fast for him to even think of restraining them. He snaps his mouth shut as soon as he speaks, feeling his face heat with self-consciousness at his abrupt question; but the other boy doesn’t so much as blink at the sudden force of the demand.

“Miles Edgeworth,” he says; and then he holds out his hand in an oddly adult gesture that nonetheless seems perfectly appropriate for the self-confident grace with which he carries himself. “I’m glad to make your acquaintance.”

Phoenix starts to reach out to accept the other’s handshake before he realizes he’s giving the wrong one, that he’s still clutching the pin in his right hand. He fumbles it into his other hand, feeling his blush darken as he does so; but Miles doesn’t pull his hand away and doesn’t even look like he wants to laugh, even by the time Phoenix is reaching out to take his offered handshake. He just looks intent, almost grave in his sincerity; his fingers close carefully around Phoenix’s, the pressure firm but not painful before he shakes the other’s hand with deliberate focus.

“Nice to meet you,” Phoenix says, feeling a little bit of the painful tension in his chest ease at what feels like it could be the beginnings of a friendship, or at least some kind of an ally in the class. “Do you--” and then the door to the classroom flies open, and a boy comes gasping into the room as out-of-breath as if he’s been sprinting.

“Sorry sir,” he says. “I got lost on my way back and--” and then he sees who it is behind the podium, and all the stress in his shoulders relaxes all at once.

“Oh,” he says, “I made it on time after all!”

“You did not,” Miles says, drawing his hand away from Phoenix’s and turning to frown at the newcomer as he crosses his arms over his chest. “It’s past time for class to start, which makes you late.”

The other boy waves a hand dismissively and strides towards the corner of the room. “The teacher’s not here yet,” he says. “So I’m on time.”

Miles huffs an exhale from over Phoenix’s shoulder, frustration audible in the sound; but Phoenix doesn’t turn to look at him, his attention is wholly fixed on the boy sauntering through the crowd to take up a position against one of the columns of the classroom.

“ _You_ ,” he says, as he recognizes the wide grin and flyaway hair of the boy he asked for directions and who proved so unhelpful. “I saw you in the hall.”

The other blinks at him. “Oh yeah,” he says, and flashes that grin again, coupled with an easy wave. “Hey there. I was supposed to find one of the new students who’s supposed to be starting today.” He pulls one of those white pins from his pocket and looks down to frown at it. “Couldn’t find him, though.”

“You must not have been looking very hard then,” Miles says from over Phoenix’s shoulder. “Since he’s _right in front of you_.”

“Huh?” The other boy looks back up, blinking vaguely at Phoenix for a moment; Phoenix can actually see the wave of realization break over the other’s face to open his eyes wide and knock his mouth into an _O_ of understanding.

“ _Oh_ ,” he says, and then he grins again, his brief shock of epiphany giving way immediately to unconcern. “Hey there!” He steps forward to offer his hand with easy informality. “‘M Larry. Nice to meet you, for real this time!”

Phoenix would like to protest -- the bad directions, maybe, or the complete absurdity of the other walking right past the student he was supposed to help. But Larry’s smile is wide and friendly, in spite of whatever foolishness might be limiting his actual utility, and at least there’s no trace of malice anywhere in that expression. Phoenix finds himself smiling back without having to reach for the response, and when he reaches out to take Larry’s hand it’s without hesitation. “Phoenix Wright. Nice to meet you.”

It’s only two new people he’s met, but he feels better already.


	2. Aspire

“Man!” Larry sighs, throwing himself down against the support of the column between Miles and Phoenix with all the force going bonelessly slack will grant him. “What a rough class!”

“You hardly did _anything_ ,” Miles comments, with just the faintest touch of ice frosting over the last word. “All that visualization was hardly intended for the meisters.”

“I was supporting you,” Larry says, without showing the least sign of noticing Miles’s ever-subtle sarcasm. “ _Two_ of you, you’ll remember. I’m the only meister in the class to have a pair of weapons to work with.”

“Of course,” Miles says, breaking off each word with the careful clarity that is always so cutting to Phoenix’s ear and that always seems to roll right off Larry’s distracted attention. “I had forgotten, how could that have slipped my mind?”

Phoenix snorts a laugh, drawing both Larry and Miles’s attention to him. Larry looks confused, wide-eyed and lost like he can’t imagine what has so amused Phoenix; but Miles’s eyes are bright, his mouth taut on the threat of matching laughter before he ducks his head and lifts a hand to cover the expression. It makes Phoenix grin the wider, even as he’s lifting a hand to wave aside whatever question Larry’s expression says he’s thinking of asking.

“It really was a rough class,” he says, agreeing with the form of Larry’s statement even if he doubts the meister had much to do beyond watch Miles and Phoenix close their eyes and frown in concentration. “I’m really not sure I’m cut out for this weapon thing. Are there really people who go out and fight Kishin eggs? That sounds terrifying.”

“That’s the EAT class,” Larry says, with all the easy comfort of a man long-since resigned to mediocrity. “They do all kinds of crazy things there. That’s for them to worry about, though. We’re just NOT students, all they want to do is make sure we don’t accidentally kill ourselves with our weapon partners.” He leans back against the column behind him and lifts both hands to fold behind his head. “The next few years will be a breeze.”

“Not for me.”

Phoenix and Larry both turn to look at Miles at the sharp snap of those words. There’s almost anger under them, some indication of the cold frustration the other demonstrates whenever he’s particularly struggling with an assignment or can’t follow the form of a practice session; but Miles isn’t looking at either of them, and he doesn’t look quite angry either, when Phoenix really looks at his face. He has his head turned towards one of the windows lining the edge of the classroom, where the afternoon sunlight is spilling gold through the glass to illuminate the classroom in stripes of yellow; when the light catches his hair it washes it almost to white, like it’s turning the silver to platinum under its touch.

“I’m not going to stay in the NOT class,” Miles says, offering the words to the light from the window rather than directly to either his fellow weapon or current meister partner. “As soon as I prove I’m good enough I’m going to move up to EAT-level studies.” He glances back at the other two, his features all but glowing in the light from the window. “I’m going to become a Death Weapon like my father.”

Phoenix’s skin prickles over the whole of his body, as if Miles’s words are electricity crackling down his spine and dancing out over his fingertips, like an echo of the Soul Force they’ve seen in the handful of demonstrations from the EAT students and adult meisters in their lecture classes. There’s a weight to the other’s words, a certainty and a level of focus that Phoenix has never felt himself, has never seen in anyone but Miles; it’s inspiring just to see secondhand, thrilling to know that anyone can be so absolutely certain in the course of their life and claim it with such conviction.

“Okay,” Larry says, sounding so totally normal that Phoenix looks to him, surprised by the lack of emotional response in the other’s voice. He’s looking at Miles too, seeing the same thing Phoenix is; but whatever it is that is so sparking Phoenix into inspiration passes Larry by, at least enough that he can look at Miles with only vague interest in his expression. “You’ll need a partner, though. How are you going to get an EAT-level meister while you’re still in the NOT class?”

“I’ll get better,” Miles says at once, without so much as hesitating over his response to this particular problem. “I’ll study hard and get good enough that they have to move me up to the next level.”

“Sounds like a lot of work,” Larry protests.

“I’ll find another meister then,” Miles says, not without the tug of a smile at the corner of his mouth at this declaration. “You can stay here in the NOT class if you want, but I want to be the best Death Weapon ever.”

Larry huffs a laugh. “Cool,” he says, and leans back against the column. “That’s okay. That’s why I have two weapon partners, anyway. Phoenix and I can stay in NOT and cheer you on from the sidelines.”

“No.”

Phoenix is surprised to hear himself speak. He hadn’t intended to, hadn’t planned to give voice to the thought in his head; but it’s done, anyway, spilled free into the space between them, and Larry and Miles are both turning to look at him, Larry’s eyes wide with that surprise again and Miles with a crease of attention in his forehead, like he’s paying more attention now to Phoenix than he ever has before.

“‘No’?” Larry repeats, like he’s trying out the taste of the word on his tongue. “What do you mean, no?”

Phoenix doesn’t look at Larry. He can’t, can’t even spare so much as a glance for the other, because Miles is staring right at him, the silvered grey of his eyes fixed full on Phoenix like the rest of the world has ceased to exist, like he intends to pull the other’s commitment from him with nothing but the force of his gaze.

“I’m not going to stay in NOT,” Phoenix says, and feels the words become true as he says them, as they weren’t moments ago but are as soon as they fall over his tongue, as if he’s changing reality itself with the force of his statement. Miles’s lashes shift as he blinks, like he’s startled or maybe can’t believe what he’s hearing, but Phoenix keeps watching him, keeps his gaze fixed on the glow of sunlight off the other’s face as he continues feeling his way into the reality unfolding before him as he gives it voice. “I want to become a Death Weapon too. Like Miles.”

“ _What_ ,” Larry says, his voice hitting heights only accessible via the experience of unexpected betrayal. “But you’re _my_ weapons!”

“Yeah,” Phoenix says, and shrugs without looking away from Miles’s focused stare. “Guess you’re going to have to start studying to come with us, Larry.” Larry wails a note of protest at this, rejection of the idea too intense for him to offer anything more coherent than that; but the corner of Miles’s mouth is turning up, and Phoenix can feel a grin tugging at his own lips to match the other’s expression.

“Alright,” Miles says, speaking loudly enough to be heard clearly over Larry’s frustrated response. “Let’s do it.”

“Yeah,” Phoenix says, and reaches out impulsively to offer his hand into the gap between himself and Miles. Miles’s gaze drops to catch at the other’s motion, at the offer made obvious by Phoenix’s outstretched hand, and Phoenix swallows hard before taking a breath to speak. “We’ll become Death Weapons together.”

Miles looks back up to Phoenix’s face. His eyes are dark, his mouth set; he looks absolutely focused, like all the conviction that so gripped his tone is caught behind his eyes, now, pinning itself close to Phoenix in front of him as if he intends to stare right through the other. There’s a beat of time, a moment of hesitation; and then he reaches out at once, closing the distance between them and clasping Phoenix’s hand in his own as part of the same motion, while next to them Larry slumps back against the column behind him and groans resigned surrender.

“Yes,” Miles says. “It’s a promise.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Larry sighs, and heaves himself upright in a single fluid motion. “I can’t let _both_ my weapons leave me behind.” He swings his hand out to clap the weight of his palm close over the top of Miles and Phoenix’s clasped hands. “We’ll make you Death Weapons, I guess.”

Phoenix snorts a laugh at Larry’s rather uninspired dedication to the goal; when he glances at the other Larry is grinning too, wide and lazy and more entertained than truly concerned. But it’s Miles who holds Phoenix’s attention as tightly as his hand, with the focus of his grey eyes fixed full on the other’s face; Phoenix can feel his easy amusement give way under the other’s intensity, can feel his laughter fading to sincerity as he looks at Miles.

“Yes,” Miles says. “We will.”

The words settle into Phoenix like a weight, like Miles’s voice is shifting the course of his path in life to take him to a new destination, a different endpoint than the idle wandering he’s always had before. He doesn’t mind. He’s never had a goal to aim for, before.


	3. Interrupted

“The premise behind Soul Resonance is quite straightforward,” the professor is saying, speaking loudly so her voice carries clearly to the back row of the amphitheatre-style classroom. “A meister and a weapon bring their soul wavelengths into alignment such that they can act and operate as a single entity for a short period of time. This allows them to achieve a far greater level of efficacy than they might be able to attain independently, even working together as fluidly as possible.”

“Question!”

The professor blinks, looking as startled as Phoenix feels at the sudden comment from the person sitting next to him. He tips his head to look, just in case he somehow catastrophically mistook the owner of that voice for someone else; but no, it’s certainly Larry, leaning forward over the desk in front of him instead of half-drowsing behind it and with his hand raised up high to catch the professor’s attention.

“Larry?” Phoenix murmurs, his forehead creasing into confusion.

From his far side Miles hisses and leans forward to wave a hand at the other. “What are you _doing_ ,” he bites off, his voice catching into the harsh edges that always come when he’s truly alarmed at something one of the other two -- occasionally Phoenix, usually Larry -- is undertaking. “Put your hand _down_.”

“I have a question,” Larry says. He makes it sound like a perfectly reasonable thing, as if the entirety of the class isn’t turning around to stare at the worst student among them actually giving voice to something.

The professor blinks again, looking like she’s trying to bring herself back into focus on the reality she’s accidentally toppled into. “Yes,” she says, and walks back around to her podium so she can pull out the attendance list. “Mr….” Phoenix can see her forehead crease in confusion as she reads and rereads Larry’s name. “Butz?”

“That’s me,” Larry says, without any indication at all of the embarrassment that one might feel at having chosen such a last name due exclusively to the fact, as he told Miles and Phoenix, that it’s ‘hilarious.’ “About soul combining.”

“Soul Resonance?”

“Yeah, that.” He braces both hands across the table in front of him and leans forward to frown down at the front of the room. “What about with two weapons?”

The professor stares at him. From Phoenix’s far side Miles groans, too softly for Larry to make out but perfectly clear for Phoenix. When Phoenix looks over at him Miles has his head in his hands, supported with both elbows pressed to the table.

“I’m sorry,” the professor says, slowly. “You’re confused about how Soul Resonance works with two weapons?”

Larry nods. “Yeah.”

“You _idiot_ ,” Miles groans into his hands. Phoenix has to bite his lip to keep from outright laughing at the resigned frustration so clear in the other’s voice. “It’s not any _different_.”

“It’s no different,” the professor says, speaking slowly like she’s not entirely sure she’s grasped Larry’s question. “It’s a matter of bringing soul wavelengths into alignment, the principle remains exactly the same regardless of how many individuals are participating. It can be more challenging with additional parties, but--”

“But the idea is the same?” Larry cuts her off. “You just…” as he lifts his hand and waves it vaguely through the air to brush away all the details of falling into Soul Resonance. “...but with three people?”

“Or four,” the professor says, her voice gaining an edge as she regains her security in the relative inanity of Larry’s question. “Or a dozen, even.”

Larry snorts. “No one can wield a dozen weapons at a time!”

“It’s not a matter of a single meister and their weapons,” the professor says sharply. “I’m referring to Group Resonance, of which there was an example in the homework reading last night. Did you complete the assignment before coming here today, Mr. Butz?”

Larry scoffs and leans back in his seat, his mouth turning up onto the easy grin that he always offers in place of any of the sense of shame Phoenix often feels he should be experiencing instead. “You’re just going to tell us about it today anyway.”

The professor’s fingers tighten against the edge of the podium. “I’m giving an _overview_ ,” she says, her voice grating over the last word as she speaks. Phoenix flinches back in his seat in an instinctive attempt to stage a retreat from the ire Larry has just called down on himself; next to him Miles has actually collapsed over the desk in front of him, apparently surrendering himself to the support of the furniture rather than trying to continue bearing the burden of his own weight. Beside them Larry is blinking at the professor, his eyes wide and expression utterly blank of any kind of self-consciousness about the waste of time his question constituted, even as the professor takes a breath to go on. “Without a strong grasp of the fundamentals this overview will be _far_ too complex to follow and you will need to spend twice as long after the fact to catch up before you can make any attempt at Resonating yourself.” She presses a hand flat to the podium and lifts her head to fix Larry with a dark stare. “Do you have any intention of moving up to the EAT class, Mr. Butz?”

Larry laughs without any trace of strain on his voice. “Sure,” he says blithely. “Both my partners are, so I--”

“You _won’t_ unless you _drastically_ step up the amount of effort you put into your studies,” the professor says. “If you continue on as you--”

The door to the classroom comes open with a _bang_. Phoenix jumps at the noise, Larry blinks; even Miles lifts his head from his arms to look towards the sound. The professor turns too, her building ire diverted by the abrupt interruption, and then the whole class is shifting to look, the silence of interested expectation falling over the room to quiet even the scratch of pens and the soft murmur of side conversations that have been continuing until now. There’s a man standing in the doorway, broad-shouldered and heavyset and with a crease in his forehead that looks like stress, a set to his jaw that looks like he’s holding some immense emotion back to present only a smooth, calm exterior.

“Sir,” the professor says, pivoting on her heel to face the newcomer more fully. There’s some professional crispness to her voice, now, that indicates that she recognizes the visitor, that gives him some measure of status just from the way she reacts to the interruption without any visible sign of anger at the disruption. “What may I help you with?”

The stranger gestures her over, lifting a hand to wave her nearer without looking at the array of students at all. She steps in closer, ducks her head at his indication to lean in; Phoenix stares along with the rest of the class, the whole room gone silent and rapt with interest at this utterly unprecedented event.

“Who is he?” Larry asks from Phoenix’s elbow, without even making a real attempt to soften his voice into a whisper.

“Why is he here?” Phoenix adds, his attention entirely captured by the man still speaking to their professor at the front of the room. It’s a rhetorical question, more giving voice to his own curiosity than something that he expects to win an answer; but from his other side Miles takes a breath, and the sound is so suggestive of knowledge that Phoenix turns immediately, his eyes going wider with surprise even before the other boy has spoken at all.

“I know him,” Miles says, frowning intently at the stranger as if a scowl will help bring recognition the faster to his mind. “I think he works with my father.”

“Your father?” Phoenix says, blinking confusion at Miles. “Here at the Academy, you mean?”

Miles ducks his head into a nod without looking away. “Yes,” he says, “I think--” and then the professor turns around, and looks directly at them, and Miles’s words die to silence on his lips.

She lifts a hand to gesture up at them. “Miles Edgeworth.” Her voice is cool, calm, level; deliberately so, if her wide-open eyes and set mouth are any indication. “Please come here.”

The room is very still. For a moment every head is turned towards Miles, every stare is fixed on him. Phoenix can see the shift of the other’s lashes as he blinks, can see the motion of his throat when he swallows.

“Yes,” Miles says, very faintly, and pushes against the desk to get to his feet.

“You should bring your things,” the professor suggests. Miles barely hesitates before bending down to collect his bag, to loop the strap over his shoulder before he moves to collect his open notes. Phoenix reaches to help him, closing the other’s open notebook and replacing the cap on his pen while Larry stretches past him to offer Miles’s jacket.

“Is everything okay?” Phoenix asks in a low voice, with his head ducked down so only Miles can hear him.

“Are you in trouble?” Larry asks, louder and with somewhat less care; but Miles answers them both the same, with a sharp jerk of his head that carries as much tension as reply.

“I don’t know.” He takes his papers from Phoenix, lifts his jacket from Larry’s outstretched hand; there’s a moment of confusion as he considers the coat and visibly struggles to decide whether to put it on or not and how to manage it with his bag still over his shoulder before he gives up and folds it over his arm. “I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah,” Larry says.

“‘Bye,” Phoenix offers, and lifts a hand in a wave; but Miles is already moving down the stairs, maneuvering with such care that his motion looks like an orchestrated act, like a performance worthy of all the eyes fixed on him. Phoenix watches him proceed down the aisle of the classroom, and down to the front of the room; and the stranger reaches out to weight a hand at Miles’s shoulder, and moves to lead him out of the door, and then Miles is gone, and Larry and Phoenix are left alone.


	4. Absence

Miles doesn’t come back.

They wait for a long time. Through the whole of class, with the minutes stretching long as Phoenix’s attention fixes itself to the door and everything the professor is saying about Soul Resonance slips entirely past his scattered focus; into the afternoon, after Larry suggests they skip their remaining classes and Phoenix points out that Miles might return in any one of them. But one leads to another leads to the last, and there’s no Miles, and by the end of the day the professors aren’t even calling his name, just skipping smoothly over the _Edgeworth_ Phoenix knows must be on the roll call. Larry finds it weird, worth huffing a disbelieving laugh over; Phoenix finds it worrying. There’s no Miles when they leave, no Miles anywhere in the crowded school halls; Phoenix makes Larry take two full circuits of the school with him, until the after-class crush has eased into only a handful of the latest stragglers returning from extra lessons or studying in the library. By the time they give up Larry is frowning as hard as Phoenix, his whole expression creased into concern like he’s a mirror for his partner’s reaction, and they make their way home in silence, leaving their joint concerns unvoiced as if that might keep them from carrying the weight Phoenix can feel pressing heavier on him with every step he takes.

Their apartment feels empty when they come in the front door. Phoenix thinks, for a moment, it’s his imagination, that he’s panicking and overthinking the situation, reading malice into situations where there is none; but then he really looks at the shoes by the front door, the heap Larry always makes of his and the mismatched row of Phoenix’s own, and he realizes what’s missing, realizes that the carefully pristine line of shoes set carefully apart from the others is gone entirely, leaving just a gap of space where this evidence of Miles’s presence used to go unnoticed until now.

“Oh no,” he breathes, feeling the chill weight of panic settling into him; and then he’s moving into the apartment, leaving Larry in the entryway with one shoe still on and an unanswered question at his lips. Phoenix is halfway down the hall by the time Larry finds voice to shout after him, his heart beating faster as he sees the absence of Miles’s textbook on the dining room table, and hears the absolute silence filling the rest of the space; and then he sees the door to Miles’s bedroom, left open by inches as it has never been before, and he knows even before he reaches to push it open.

The room is eerie stripped of any signs of its occupant. There’s the bed still, of course, and the dresser in the corner a perfect match for the one in Phoenix’s room; except the bed is made with unfamiliar sheets, and the dresser is cleared of any ornamentation across the top, and Phoenix is sure without looking that the drawers will be as echoingly empty as the rest of the house is. Miles’s clothes are gone, his books are gone; his presence has been stripped from the room as entirely as he was removed from class, as if someone reached down and plucked him neatly from the space he inhabited up until now.

“Jeez, Phoenix,” Larry says, sounding a little bit breathless as he shuffles down the hallway in the other’s wake. “What’s the big rush, it’s not like he’s going to disappear or anything.”

Phoenix has to swallow hard past the knot in his throat. “Yeah,” he says, and his voice sounds raw and shaky but he can’t smooth it, can’t even make an attempt at easing it into calm. “That’s because he already has.”

“Huh?” Larry asks, his voice clear and carrying into the emptiness of the space in front of Phoenix as he steps into the doorway. “What do you mean, he already--” and then he sees the empty room, and he falls as silent as Phoenix.

Neither of them move for a moment. Phoenix can’t look away from the space in front of him, the room that used to be a place Miles lived and is now just a husk of what it was, a shell stripped down to nothing but the bare outline of a home with the absence of its occupant. His throat is tight, his eyes are burning; he can’t tell if he’s more angry or sad.

“He’s gone?” Larry says, his voice jumping up at the end to turn the statement into a question. He steps past Phoenix and into the room, breaking the barrier of the doorway like he doesn’t feel the breathless sense of sanctity that Phoenix does, that idea that moving forward would be an intrusion even with Miles gone. Larry touches a hand to the sheets, reaches out to pull at the drawer of the dresser; Phoenix flinches at the screech of the wood on its rails, at the rattle of empty space jolting open to Larry’s touch. “His stuff’s all gone too.”

“Yeah,” Phoenix says. His voice feels as echoey against the inside of his head as the drawer sounded when Larry pulled it open. “I can see.”

Larry heaves a sigh and shoves the drawer shut again. “Well this sucks,” he sighs. “We’re never going to make it to the EAT class this year if Miles has to catch up with us when he gets back.”

Phoenix blinks. Larry’s phrasing is so opposite to his own understanding that for a moment it sounds reasonable just for how novel the concept is; and it would be nice to believe him, nice to tell himself this is a temporary absence, a minor blip in an otherwise uninterrupted school life. But he can feel the gap inside his chest like Miles has hollowed himself out of that space too, has left a hole in the space between two of Phoenix’s ribs the same as he has left his bedroom silent and still, and Phoenix knows in a way he can’t ignore that Larry’s blasé statement is nothing more than misinterpretation.

“No,” Phoenix says, sounding so strained Larry looks up at him, staring wide-eyed at the sound of the other’s voice. Phoenix blinks hard, trying to fight back the burn in the eyes, and his tears overflow to trace a line of damp down one cheek as his throat tightens onto a sob. “I don’t think he’s coming back, Larry.”

Larry stares at Phoenix for a moment, his expression blank of understanding that Phoenix wishes he could share, if only for the relief it might offer from the tears hiccuping in his throat and trying to choke him to silence. Finally he blinks, the movement doing nothing to ease the confusion in his face before he speaks. “What _happened_ to him?”

Phoenix shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says, and then he has to turn, has to duck out of the doorway and retreat down the hall to his own room, to ease open the door to the dark of his bedroom and step into the shadows and close himself into isolation, just for a moment, just until he can catch his breathing back under control and stop the tears of miserable loss that have come with this sudden upset in his happy life.

He hadn’t even known to say goodbye.


	5. Bright

Phoenix isn’t paying attention to the fight.

He ought to be. It’s his only job, at present; without even a role to play in the combat there’s nothing at all to distract him from the smooth grace of the woman in front of him, her motions so fluid and practiced that it takes a keen eye to see the partial transformation done on her right hand, to see the curves of the magatama she bears in place of her forearm as it glows with the inner light of Soul Force. But that grace that makes her motions so easy makes it the harder for Phoenix to track them; he finds himself lost in the elegance of the movement, like he’s watching a performance instead of the true fight to the death that is happening in front of him. The other weapon’s abilities strip the sense of danger from the fight to make it more of a show than a demonstration, and however graceful it may be Phoenix’s mind is elsewhere, tonight, wandering back over the last years to familiar paths and well-trodden anxieties, rehashing a few words of conversation that he never knew, at the time, would carry so much weight.

He wonders where Miles is now. It’s been long years since Phoenix last saw him; he isn’t even sure he’d know him to pass on the street, even with that unique silver hair to mark him out. It hardly makes a difference anyway; Miles isn’t in the city, hasn’t been since his inexplicably precipitous exit all those years ago, until Phoenix has begun to wonder if he didn’t invent him out of whole cloth, if the warm glow of affection that attaches itself to those memories he calls up isn’t a creation of his own imagination rather than indicative of a true existence. He doesn’t even have Larry to rely on; that connection broke when Phoenix moved up to the EAT class, after years of slow effort while he waited for Larry to catch up before finally realizing that however good a friend he may be Larry is no fighter. They meet for lunch, sometimes, still, or very occasionally a movie during those rare times Larry is neither dating someone nor actively pursuing the latest in his string of NOT-level weapon partners; but for Larry smiles come easier than melancholy, and he’s not the type to look back on a loss that still carries such an aching hurt with it. He’d rather talk about his current partner, or his newest prospect, would rather build castles in the sky than look back on the ruins that resulted from his failed attempts at them in the past; so Phoenix lets the past lie, when he’s with Larry, and keeps his memories of Miles to himself.

“Phoenix.” The voice is clear against the quiet of the night, gentle but no less certain of itself for that. Phoenix blinks, realizes he’s staring at his hands, lifts his head at once; only to find the other weapon standing in front of him, her body transformed into her usual human form and her gaze fixed on him, a single dark eyebrow raised over her steady stare. “You’re daydreaming again.”

“What?” Phoenix says; and then straightens in a rush, as his awareness of the situation catches up with him and he remembers with a surge of guilt what he’s meant to be doing. “Ah! No! I’m sorry, I got distracted for a moment.”

“A moment is all the time it took,” the other weapon says, her mouth quirking on a smile that takes the worst of the edge from her words. She lifts her hand from her side, where she’s holding the glow of a Kishin soul instead of the faint illumination of her magatama form, and tosses the sphere into Phoenix’s lap. He fumbles the catch and nearly drops the soul entirely before he can get his hands steady around the smooth weight of it. “There’s not much point in you coming out for observation if you’re occupied in your hands instead of the fight, you know.”

Phoenix ducks his head down farther, feeling his face flame hot with embarrassment. “Yes, ma’am.”

“ _Phoenix_ ,” the other sighs. “Call me Mia, please. We’re both weapons, aren’t we?” She steps in to drop next to Phoenix, moving with the same casual grace she showed in the fight moments before. “You don’t need to stand on ceremony with me.”

Phoenix grimaces down at his hands and hunches his shoulders in farther like he can perhaps take shelter underneath them. “We _are_ , but it’s not the same. You’re a _Death Weapon_ and I’m just--”

“A Death Weapon in training,” Mia reminds him, reaching out to shove gently against his shoulder. “When are you going to accept that? You’ve been part of the EAT class for months, now, shouldn’t you be used to it?”

Phoenix sighs and lifts a hand to rumple roughly through his hair. “I am. I will be. I don’t know, I just feel like such an imposter most of the time.” He lets his hand fall forward along with his shoulders. “I don’t even have a meister to go out on missions with.”

There’s a pause, a breath of silence between them; and then Mia clears her throat into the silence of the night. “Does that make me an imposter too?”

Phoenix blinks confusion at the soul glowing in his hands. “What? No, of course not, why would--” and then he remembers, the surge of self-consciousness hitting him all at once at he realizes how badly he’s misstepped. “Oh. _Oh_. Oh god, I’m _so_ sorry, that’s not what I meant, I didn’t...it’s different when--”

“When my partner died in combat?” Mia asks with far less venom on her tone than she might have. Phoenix cringes at the direct force of her words, but when he risks a glance sideways Mia is just watching him, her mouth tugged up very slightly at the corner and her gaze far softer than he probably deserves. She waits until he’s looking at her before she lifts a shoulder in a shrug and turns to look up at the sky overhead. “It happens. I wish it didn’t, but we’re fighting dangerous opponents and that means there are some casualties no matter what we do. Godot knew that as well as I do.”

“I’m sorry,” Phoenix says again, a little more calmly but no less sincerely. “You seem so comfortable with it, now.”

“It’s been over a year,” Mia says, still looking up at the sky. “Time helps, usually. And having teaching to occupy me while I wait for a meister that’s a good fit.”

“You’ve been looking for a new meister for a year?” Phoenix asks. “I didn’t know it had been that long.”

Mia nods. “It’s important to have a good connection,” she says. “Especially when you’re going out on missions. And I’m something of a…” as she holds her hand up and lets herself shift into the beginnings of the glowing curve of her weapon form. “...Unique weapon. I’m not compatible with most meisters.”

Phoenix’s shoulders slump forward again. “Yeah.” He looks back down to the soul cupped in his hands. “I know how that is.”

“Come on now” and there’s a sudden weight around Phoenix’s shoulders as Mia throws an arm around him and leans in hard. “You’ll never find the right meister partner if you’re always looking at the ground.”

Phoenix blinks. “Huh?”

“Optimism is important,” Mia tells him. “That’s the weapon’s job, you know. You have to keep smiling to back up your meister.”

Phoenix can feel his mouth twist on a wry smile. “Even if they don’t exist yet?”

“Especially then,” Mia says. “Because then you have to support yourself until you find the right person.” There’s a pause, a moment of near-companionable quiet; and then Mia takes a breath, and says, “It’s also a good opportunity to _focus on your studies_ ,” and Phoenix flinches even as he ducks his head to hide the self-deprecating laugh that pulls itself free from his lips.

“I know,” he says. “Sorry. I’ll pay attention next time.”

“Good,” Mia says, letting her hand come up to ruffle through Phoenix’s hair. “Don’t worry about it too much, though” as she gets to her feet and lifts her hands over her head to curve into a stretch. “I’ll have more to show you soon. I have a feeling I’ll be getting a compatible meister partner any day now.”

Phoenix blinks. “What? How do you know?”

“Mm,” Mia hums, still with her head tipped back to smile up at the sky. “You’ll just have to wait and find out, won’t you?” She turns her head to flash a grin at Phoenix, bright and warm and comforting; and then she ducks her chin at the soul still glowing faintly in his hands. “Come on, let’s get that back to the Academy before it gets too much later, shall we?” Phoenix smiles back, the expression coming easy with Mia’s to guide his way; and he gets to his feet, and falls into step alongside the older weapon as she turns to lead them back out of the forest.

She was right, Phoenix thinks, as the shadows of the trees give way to the glow of the city distant on the horizon. It’s incredible how much a smile helps.


	6. Recognize

It’s past midnight by the time Phoenix makes it to the Academy.

He lives too far away, he thinks. It’s never been a problem before -- the few extra minutes of walking to class or to meet up with his instructor for the day are something he has been able to plan around, been able to work into the structure of his life without difficulty -- but now, with the echo of the headmaster’s phone call ringing in his head, he can’t cross the distance fast enough, keeps breaking into a jog even knowing he’ll only wind himself and have to stop again. _Phoenix Wright_ , the voice had said, the words heavy with intensity audible even to Phoenix’s sleep-hazed mind, _you need to come to the Academy_. That was it, just those few words before Phoenix had fumbled an “Okay” of response and the line had gone silent; but the minimal information is the more foreboding the longer Phoenix turns over the slick-smooth meaninglessness of those words. He struggles into his clothes, not bothering to make sure his shirt is right-side out or to find a belt for his pants, and he’s out the door as soon as he can fumble the lock open, leaving his apartment unlocked behind him along with the jacket he didn’t waste the time to grab.

He’s breathless by the time he reaches the front steps of the Academy. He broke into a jog again for the last few blocks, as the night-dark of familiar streets told him he was getting closer; and this time he keeps going when he loses his breath, speeds up as he draws closer, until by the time he’s stumbling to a halt at the base of the endless row of stairs he’s dizzy and trembling with lack of oxygen. He takes the steps immediately, without pausing to catch his breath, and his footsteps are unsteady and his vision is blurring but he’s moving, at least, pushing himself forward on the sense of impending doom that is beating so hard at the back of his thoughts with every step he takes.

He’s lost sense of time by the time he makes it to the front courtyard. It could have been ten minutes since he left home, could have been hours; his awareness is too hazy, his consciousness too fractured by the sleep he left so close behind him and the sudden, dizzying exertion of his rush to the school. He almost expects to see dawn breaking over the horizon of the city laid out below the academy, almost imagines he can hear the murmur of the city waking behind him; but he doesn’t turn to look for either, doesn’t acknowledge the existence of the world beyond the Academy walls. He was called here for a reason, for a cause he doesn’t want to think about and can’t help but deconstruct; and when he moves it’s to stumble forward, to reach out and push at the heavy weight of the school door to let himself inside.

The hallways are dark at this time of night, glowing with minimal illumination from the turned-down lights and absent any sign of the dozens of students that fill them during the days, when Phoenix is here as just another weapon in the EAT class. They feel bigger than they usually do, as if they’ve taken on greater width and height without anyone to fill them; Phoenix is reminded of his first day all over again, as if the last years of familiarity are reeling back to leave him as lost and uncertain as he was that first morning. It’s an unpleasant feeling, to be so adrift in the memory of the existence he thought he had left behind him along with the other trappings of his immaturity; but he can’t shake it, can’t throw off the effect of the shadows filling the corners of the halls and the oppressive weight of the silence bearing down on him like an unseen hand crushing the air from his lungs with every step forward he takes, as if he’s descending into the lightless depths of the ocean instead of making his way down the hall of the school he’s attended for the last several years. It’s his first day all over again, uncertainty looming around every corner and some unknown judgment waiting at his endpoint; and for every forward step Phoenix takes he feels his memory travel farther back, until by the time he rounds the corner to the headmaster’s office he can feel anticipation so clear that for the first moment he thinks the stranger hunched over their knees alongside the door is Miles.

It’s not Miles. That much is clear as soon as Phoenix blinks, as soon as he can chase away the haze of imagination and the comfort of nostalgia from his vision; the figure is too young, for one thing, with far too much hair that is far too dark, and for another she is very clearly a girl, even with her face ducked so he can barely make out the lines of her face. He stops at the corner of the hallway, unsure if she has seen him yet and afraid of startling her if she hasn’t; and then her shoulders shift, moving through a hiccup of air that catches audibly in her chest, and when she lifts her hand it’s to rub against her eyes with a weight to the action that makes it abundantly clear why she would need to dry her cheeks.

“Oh,” Phoenix says, without thinking about how much of a surprise he’s likely to give the other, and he’s stepping forward while the girl is still jolting in shock, still lifting her head to stare wide-eyed up at him. There’s something familiar in her face, something about the shape of her eyes or the set of her mouth, maybe, that is oddly recognizable, even though Phoenix is very sure he’s never met her before; but more importantly her eyes are red with tears, her cheeks damp with what are clearly the tracks of unhappiness from far longer than the last few minutes. She flinches back, moving towards the wall behind her as Phoenix comes forward, and it’s only then that Phoenix thinks to stall his forward motion and lift his hands in a gesture of comfort rather than threat.

“Sorry,” he says immediately, feeling guilt knot to a weight low in his stomach. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.” The girl blinks at him, still looking uncertain but not any more panicky, at least, and Phoenix lets his hands lower slowly. “Are you okay? Do you need help?”

The girl shakes her head, the motion certain enough that there’s no doubt in Phoenix’s mind that she means it sincerely, even though her eyes are filling with renewed tears. “I’m alright,” she says, her voice breaking in a way that makes it clear she’s speaking for her physical state rather than her mental one. “What...why are you here?” She hiccups a breath and meets Phoenix’s eyes with something that might be almost curiosity, if it was set in an expression of less all-consuming anguish. “Who are you?”

“The headmaster told me to come,” Phoenix says, staying where he is without trying to close the distance to this strange girl with the familiar face. “He didn’t say why. I’m Phoenix Wright.”

The girl sucks in a sharp inhale, her voice catching in her throat with the force of her reaction; her hand lifts to cover her mouth, her tear-wet eyes go liquid with a fresh surge of emotion. Phoenix can feel his skin prickle with discomfort at the look in her eyes: something between recognition and the start of what looks terrifyingly like sympathy. He braces his shoulders, steadying his stance in an attempt to stabilize himself against the force of the shadows around him and the uncanny weight of the conversation he’s in the middle of right now.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Do I know--” and the door to the headmaster’s office comes open, and the headmaster himself steps out in a swirl of black robes and the heavy huff of an exhale that pulls Phoenix’s attention to him at once. The girl turns too, twisting where she sits to blink up at the man now next to her; the headmaster looks down at her, his expression collapsing into heavy lines of sympathy that make him look far older even than the solid grey of his beard does.

“Maya,” he says, his voice heavy as he bends over to press a hand to the girl’s shoulder; and then he looks up to meet Phoenix’s stare from the other side of the room. “Phoenix. I’m glad you made it.”

“I came straight here,” Phoenix says, offering simple fact as the only thing he has to give past the chill of rising panic coursing through him in place of the warmth of his blood. He is sure he doesn’t want to know the answer to his question, is sure he will be happier if he never knows why he’s been called out here at this time of night; but there’s only one thing he can say, it’s as if the words are being pulled from him wholly against his will. “Why did you call me out here, sir?”

The headmaster heaves a huge sigh. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” he says. “It’s about your mentor, Mia Fey” and as soon as he says the name Phoenix knows, knows why the girl ducking her head over a fresh round of tears looks so familiar, knows why he’s here in the middle of the night, knows why his blood is going so chill with the horrified realization breaking upon him like an unwelcome dawn. “There’s been an accident.”


	7. Partner

“I’m sorry,” Phoenix says again, reiterating the apology that has become as much a part of his existence as breathing over the last three weeks. “I’m really not the right kind of weapon for you at all, I think.”

Maya shakes her head hard enough that the dark weight of her hair swings around her shoulders. “It’s fine,” she says, offering the statement with enough force that Phoenix almost believes her. “I came here to become a meister, after all. I’ll need to learn to work with lots of different weapon partners, so I might as well get started now!”

Phoenix ducks his head to frown at the road beneath his feet instead of looking at the forced cheer that Maya has proven impressively good at mustering. She even seems to mean it, most of the time; but with her moved into the room down the hall from his own Phoenix can’t help but hear the soft sobs that last for hours late at night, can’t help but notice the shadows of sleeplessness collecting under the dark of her eyes. She’s better now than she was -- her smile looks less like a fight with herself, anyway -- but Phoenix can hardly expect her to bounce back from her sister’s death when he still finds himself caught off-guard by surges of grief at what are generally the least opportune times. “Still,” he says, offering the word in a low tone towards the toes of his shoes. “You came here to work with your sister.”

“And you’re not her,” Maya says, her voice far more clear than Phoenix’s own and far steadier than Phoenix expected it to be. He looks up towards her, surprised by the energy in Maya’s voice, only to find her head raised towards the sky overhead and her mouth curving on the certain shape of a smile. “That’s okay. I’m not her either, after all. We’re both making do with the best we have.”

Phoenix doesn’t mean to laugh. The rush of sound spills from him on accident more than intent, a snort of dark amusement he can’t hold back before it pulls itself loose. “Thanks, that’s flattering.”

“Don’t complain,” Maya says, lifting her hand to wave aside the dry weight of Phoenix’s words. “If I’m insulting you I’m insulting myself too. You said yourself that we’re not a perfect match.”

Phoenix shrugs uncomfortably. “I’m not a good match for _anyone_ , I think,” he says. “If you tried partnering with one of the new weapons--”

“ _No_ ,” Maya says, and she stops dead in the middle of the sidewalk, turning to brace her hands on her hips and glare up at Phoenix. Phoenix stumbles to a halt, feeling strangely trapped by the judgment of a girl several years younger and a handful of inches shorter than himself, but Maya shows no indication of self-consciousness in pinning him in place with the force of the determined scowl at her lips. “I’ve been training to be a weapon meister for _years_. Do you know how much time my family puts into preparing us to come to Death Weapon Meister Academy?”

“Uh,” Phoenix says, not entirely sure if this question is meant to be rhetorical or not. “No?”

“I’ve been preparing for this since I was ten,” Maya informs him. “Mia had been doing partial transformations for years before I did and I wanted to become the best meister I could be so I could work with her after she became a Death Weapon.” Her voice catches on that, sticking against the words as some trace of her emotion catches back up with her; but she doesn’t pause for more than a breath, more than a quick dip of her lashes as she blinks back the tears that start at the mention of her sister. “I can’t be her partner now but I _am_ going to be a good meister, no matter who my partner is.” She tips her chin down, ducking under the shadow of her hair so she can flash a grin up at Phoenix from under the weight of it. “Even if you’re too scared to team up with me.”

“I’m not scared,” Phoenix tells her, feeling the angle of a smile trying to tug free of his mouth in spite of the sincere weight of Maya’s words. “I just haven’t been able to really partner with anyone since I left the NOT class.”

“Well, that’s all changed now,” Maya tells him, and turns to take the lead back down the road again. Her steps are a little easier now than they were, her movement a little more fluid, like she’s shaken off some of the strain that she has borne like a weight on her shoulders from the first moment Phoenix saw her in the dark shadows of the Academy hallway. “You have a meister now, you have no one to blame but yourself if you can’t keep up from here on out!”

Phoenix huffs a laugh again, unable to hold back the amusement at his lips. “I’m going to keep up.”

“You had better,” Maya says, and tips her head to grin conspiratorially back over her shoulder at Phoenix. For a moment the angle shifts the features of her face, the laughter in her voice lowers her tone, and it could be Mia herself in front of Phoenix, given life again for a few brief seconds in the shape of her sister’s existence. “I’m not going to go easy on you like Mia did.”

Phoenix can feel his eyebrows raise nearly to his hairline. “You think Mia went _easy_ on me?”

“We have to be even better together now that she’s gone,” Maya says, speaking clearly so her voice carries right over Phoenix’s protest. There’s still a thrum of emotion under her tone, still the weight of grief clinging to the last words, but her voice doesn’t break, and the steady stride of her pace doesn’t slow. “You’re going to become a Death Weapon, and I’m going to become a famous meister.” She looks back over her shoulder at Phoenix following behind her, her eyes so like Mia’s fixing on him for a moment; and then she stops again, and turns to face him at once, reaching out to extend her hand abruptly into the space between them.

“Let’s do it together,” she says, her head turned up so she can hold his gaze with the fixed weight of her own. “We’ll make Mia’s spirit proud.”

Phoenix takes a deep breath, feels the air rush to fill his lungs, to press against the strain of loss still weighting at his shoulders, still gripping tight against his chest; and then he lets it out in a gusting spill of sound, and he lifts his hand to clasp around Maya’s offered hand. Her hand is smaller than his, her fingers shorter and narrower, but her grip is steady, her hold as certain on his hand as his is on hers. “Agreed.”

“Good,” Maya says. “It’s a deal.” Her eyes brighten, her smile quirks at the corner; when she draws her hand away it’s with a flourish, sweeping her arm through the air as she turns to continue striding down the street. “First step, we get some lunch!”

Phoenix blinks after her. “What?”

“Lunch!” Maya says, glancing back over her shoulder to grin at him. “We can hardly fight on an empty stomach, right? And you’ve been living here for years, you must know the best place to get a burger.”

“Well, there _is_ a place--”

“Perfect,” Maya says without waiting to hear the end of Phoenix’s sentence. “I’m starving. Thanks for treating me!”

It takes Phoenix a moment to catch up with the implication of this. “ _Hey_ ,” he manages as he does, frowning into realization at Maya as he jogs to catch up with her. “When did this become my treat?”

“It was always going to be,” Maya tells him, tipping her head to bat her eyelashes up at him. “I’m a girl, I shouldn’t have to pay for myself.”

Phoenix scoffs. “Nice try.”

“I’m new.”

“I’m _poor_.”

“Fine,” Maya sighs, heaving a huge exhale like she’s giving up something of great value. “Then because I’m your meister and it’s your job as my weapon to look after me.”

Phoenix turns this over in his head for a minute before narrowing his eyes at Maya next to him. “You’re not going to be easy to partner with, are you?”

Maya turns her head to grin up at him. “Nope,” she says with easy unconcern. “Don’t forget you shook on it already.”

Phoenix is surprised by how easy his laugh comes, even with the pressure still tight around his chest, and when he catches his breath back he finds it’s easier to fill his lungs than it was before.

It’s surprising how much difference a partner makes.


	8. Reunited

“I’m telling you, I’m ready!” Maya insists from where she’s keeping pace at Phoenix’s elbow. “I bet we could take on a witch right now!”

Phoenix glances sideways at his partner. “Sure we could,” he says, not bothering to keep the dry sarcasm out of his tone. “With a whole four practice sessions under our belts I’m sure we’re ready to jump into the final test, you’re right.”

Maya waves a hand through the air to brush aside this apparently unimportant concern. “You’ve been studying here for years, haven’t you? And I’m part of the prestigious Fey family.” She tosses her head and crosses her arms over her chest in a show of familial pride she only ever uses in moments like these as a ploy to win arguments. “We can do anything we set our minds to!”

“We haven’t even Soul Resonated yet,” Phoenix protests as they round the corner of the hallway to the headmaster’s office. “We ought to be taking missions from the main assignment board, not asking for special tasks.”

“We’re never going to get better if we don’t challenge ourselves!” Maya tells him. “Where’s your sense of adventure, Nick?”

“Dunno,” Phoenix drawls. “I must have misplaced it somewhere during all those lectures on combat safety.”

“You’re no fun,” Maya informs him decisively. “You’ll never become a hero if you do everything by the book all the time.”

“I’m not saying we have to _forever_ ,” Phoenix protests. “But it would be good to get _some_ hands-on experience with easier opponents before jumping in the deep end.”

Maya shakes her head with enough energy to override Phoenix’s protest before she’s even put words to her disapproval. “Being a part of the DWMA means fighting _evil_ , Nick. There’s no point if we’re just picking off little enemies. How are we ever going to make a difference like that?”

“We _will_ make a difference,” Phoenix says. “Eventually.”

“That’s what you’re _always_ saying,” Maya fires back. Their pace is increasing as they continue down the hallway, as if the sound of their footsteps is falling into rhythm with the speed of their speech; Maya actually breaks into a jog as they turn the last corner before the door to the headmaster’s office so she can shoulder herself into a leading position in front of Phoenix, as if her physical position is equivalent to her edge in this now-familiar argument. “How long have you been a weapon in the EAT class now?”

Phoenix sets his jaw on a frown. “That has nothing to do with--”

“It _does_ have to do with it,” Maya says, turning on her heel to face the other so abruptly Phoenix nearly runs into her, and then nearly loses his balance and falls over as he tries to catch himself. Maya doesn’t acknowledge the near-collision in either word or action; she just stays where she is, leaning in towards Phoenix as if to underscore the force of her words with the tip of her shoulders. “You moved up to the EAT class because you wanted to become a Death Weapon, right? But as long as you don’t have a meister you can keep telling yourself you’re trying to get better without having to actually go out and do anything about it.” She lifts a hand to stab a finger into Phoenix’s chest; Phoenix doesn’t even lift a hand to stop her. “As long as you’re waiting for the perfect meister you can keep telling yourself you’re doing everything you can, but that’s not fair to the other EAT students who are all trying their best.” She huffs a breath and rocks back to fold her arms over her chest again as she looks up at Phoenix. “And it’s not fair to yourself either.”

Phoenix blinks. He’s still not used to these bursts of insight from a girl who spends much of her time chirping delight over the latest fast-food chain in town or doodling on her notes through the lectures they attend together. But Maya has been more than competent in the few practice sessions they have had, has already demonstrated a sense of movement and a knack for combat with Phoenix’s undersized weapon form that Larry never had in all the time Phoenix worked with him, and her words ring more true than Phoenix expected them to. He lets them settle for a moment, turns the framework of them over in his head; and then he heaves a sigh, and nods in a sharp motion of certainty.

“You’re right,” he says, simply and without waiting to see the way Maya’s eyes go wide at his admission or the way her mouth curves up on the start of a sudden smile. “We’ll have to enter the fray sometime.” He squares his shoulders and lifts his head to look down the hallway leading towards the door to the headmaster’s office. “Let’s go see what we can get him to give us.”

Maya claps her hands and laughs a bubbling spill of delight. “That’s the spirit!” she says, and turns to lead the way towards the office. Phoenix falls into step with her without hesitating, letting the pace of Maya’s footsteps against the floor guide his own.

“I hope we get something big,” Maya says, resuming the thread of the earlier conversation as if she only set it down for a moment. “I want to prove ourselves as the heroes we’re going to be, in the end!”

Phoenix huffs a laugh. “I’m sure the headmaster will give us whatever he thinks is best,” he says, with as much optimism as he can muster for the words; and then the door to the headmaster’s office swings open just as they’re drawing towards it, and a stranger steps out without looking at them, his head turned back to watch whoever is still in the room behind him. He nearly walks into Phoenix and Maya before he turns back to look, and then he startles backwards, leaning towards the open door behind him like he’s thinking about returning to the office.

“Oh!” He blinks surprise at the other two, his eyes as wide and innocent as his expression in spite of broad shoulders and a dark coat that makes him look more heavyset than he actually is. “Sorry pal, I didn’t see you there!”

“It’s fine,” Phoenix says, caught off-guard by this sudden appearance of someone whose face he doesn’t have even a vague familiarity with. After all the time he’s spent at the Academy he knows all the other students and the faculty by sight, if not by name; the last time he met a true stranger was Maya, and with resemblance to Mia in every line of her face she hardly felt like a newcomer even during that first dark, dreadful night. “We should have been going slower ourselves.”

“We’re here for a new mission,” Maya volunteers from Phoenix’s side, without so much as hesitating in striking up a conversation. Both Phoenix and the stranger look at her; she’s beaming up at the other, her whole expression as open and friendly as his is. “I don’t know you from any of my classes. Are you new here?”

“Oh,” the other says, and lifts a hand to scratch at the back of his neck as he hunches forward into uncertainty. “Kinda. Been a while since I was back at school, anyway, I don’t know any of you new kids here.” Maya huffs a breath Phoenix recognizes as irritation at being referring to as a ‘kid,’ but the stranger doesn’t seem to notice. “My meister and I got called back in kind of a hurry to fill a vacancy on staff, I guess. Heard there was an accident and--”

“We hardly have the time for small talk, Gumshoe.” The voice comes from farther inside the office, where Phoenix can’t see the speaker for the angle of the door in front of him and the space-filling span of the other’s shoulders; there’s something soft about the vowels, a vaguely foreign lilt to the syllables that prickles uncanny electricity against the back of Phoenix’s neck. “How many times do I have to tell you that efficiency is the mark of a true Death Weapon?”

“Ah,” the stranger in the doorway says, turning to look back over his shoulder without letting his hand fall from the back of his neck. “Right, yeah, I know. Sorry, sir.”

“I’d prefer you simply changed your behavior rather than bothering with apologies,” the voice says, taking on an edge that seems undeserved by the minimal interaction; but the speaker is stepping forward and into the frame of the doorway, and the first glance at him blows all thought of fairness or justified irritation out of Phoenix’s mind.

He’s tall, of a height with Phoenix or maybe an inch taller, dressed in a suit that fits far better than the heavy coat his partner is wearing. The suit itself is of a shade of magenta bordering on pink and features a spill of white at the collar that ought to look silly and just looks haughtily fashionable, when coupled with the self-assured angle of the other’s shoulders and the level tone of his voice. But it’s not the suit Phoenix is staring at, any more than he’s paying attention to the friendly stranger or even to Maya next to him. His focus is reserved for storm-grey hair falling in sleek lines around the other’s face, for eyes a few shades lighter than the deliberate arrangement of that hair alongside them, and he’s staring at the set force of the other’s jaw, at the lines of a face visibly older but as easy to recognize as Phoenix’s own, as if the years that have passed since he last saw it were never there at all.

“Oh my god,” Phoenix breathes, his voice shaking so badly in his throat the most volume he can manage is a whisper. It doesn’t matter; the other still turns as suddenly as if Phoenix had slapped him, as if he is feeling the same shock of familiarity Phoenix experienced on seeing the face of a friend so long-lost he thought him gone for good. Grey eyes widen, that stern expression falls blank on shock; and his name tumbles past Phoenix’s lips, carried forward on reflex too strong to be held back by the start of horror in the other’s eyes, by the expression that says perhaps this is a reunion as unwanted as it is unexpected. “ _Miles_.”


	9. Distant

“Where have you _been_?” Phoenix demands, blurting the words as he all but jogs to follow Miles in his rapid retreat down the hallway. “Miles, what happened to you? I thought I was never going to see you again.”

“I thought you would have graduated by now,” Miles says without turning, without giving Phoenix anything but the line of his shoulders under his well-tailored suit to look at as the other follows him down the hallway, with Miles’s partner and Maya in somewhat slower pursuit behind them. “Honestly, what have you been doing with yourself all these years?”

“ _Studying_ ,” Phoenix answers, the reply coming so quickly he barely even feels the razor edge of Miles’s implication against his psyche. “I made it to EAT and I’m been looking for a meister. Where have you been? You just vanished, we never even knew what had happened to you. Why didn’t you write, or call, or visit?” Phoenix can feel himself frowning, can feel his expression falling into lines of tension he can’t hope to ease from it; but Miles is still walking away, his stride so long it gives the impression of the closest thing to an outright run his dignity will allow him, and the only glimpse Phoenix got of his reaction was that one moment of wide-eyed shock before Miles had pushed past them all to stride away down the hall. “Miles, slow down, where are you going?”

“I have important things to do, _Wright_ ,” Miles informs him, his voice cold enough that it chills Phoenix’s blood in his veins even without the snapping impact of his last name from that voice that only ever carried friendship on its tone, before. “Surely you know how long I’ve been out of the city. I have many details to attend to before I can step into my role at the Academy.”

“ _What_ role?” Phoenix demands. “Are you here as a Death Weapon?”

Miles turns so fast Phoenix doesn’t have time to react to the action. It’s in the space between one step and another, the hesitation of a single footfall and the following; Phoenix is still moving forward when Miles is turning to face him, his eyes dark and his jaw set on what is so absolutely, unquestionably anger that Phoenix is shying away from it instinctively before he thinks the motion through.

“ _No_ ,” Miles says, and he’s reaching out to shove at the other’s shoulder so hard Phoenix stumbles with the force, his balance veering out from under him as fast as Miles’s grip pushes against him. His feet skid on the floor, his legs almost drop him to the ground; he’s only just catching himself from the abrupt, adrenaline-soaked panic of near-falling when Miles goes on speaking. “I’m here as a _meister_.”

Phoenix blinks hard, feeling as if Miles’s words have impacted his thoughts with more force than that shove at his shoulder. “What?” He stares at Miles in front of him, trying to align the set of those shoulders and the barely-restrained frustration in that face with the smile of the boy he knew, with the brilliant light that always seemed to cling to the other like he was on the verge of transforming at a moment’s notice. “But you’re a _weapon_.”

“I am not,” Miles says, dragging the words past his teeth like he has to force each one to sound at his lips. “I can transform into a weapon but I _chose_ to be a meister.”

Phoenix stares at him. “What?” He straightens his stance from the precarious angle at which he caught himself and reaches to push a hand through his hair as he tries to make sense of this. “But...you were going to be a Death Weapon. You _wanted_ to be a Death Weapon. Wasn’t that your dream?” He takes a step closer, towards Miles standing with his shoulders squared to a wall and his hands curling on tension at his sides, reaches out as if the touch of his fingers might bring down that barrier that is turning his childhood friend into a stranger, that is turning the clear color of those grey eyes dark and heavy with ire as the other stares at him. “We said we were going to do it together, Miles. Like your fath--”

“Don’t _call_ me that,” Miles snaps, and lifts his hand to knock away Phoenix’s outstretched fingers. The impact lands hard against the bone in Phoenix’s wrist, like the weight of the weapon in Miles’s body is rising to the surface of his skin to grant force to the blow. “I hardly know you at all.”

Phoenix’s breath rushes out of him, as if Miles’s words have forced the air from his lungs to leave him drowning in the middle of the DWMA hallway. “What?” He has to swallow before he can find voice for the words he wants to give. His wrist is aching from the force of Miles’s blow. “Don’t...we’re _friends_. We were _partners_.”

“That was a long time ago,” Miles tells him, his voice as icy and distant as the edge of his stare. “We were children.”

“You were still _you_ ,” Phoenix says. He can feel the ache of injured affection in his chest tightening like a fist around his heart, can feel the knot of pain in his thoughts turning over into tension at his jaw and frustration in his thoughts. “Are you just going to pretend that part of your life never happened? Are you going to act like you aren’t a weapon at all? Whatever happened to your _dream_ , Miles?”

“I told you not to call me that,” Miles snaps, his voice scoring a line between the two of them. “I grew up. I would have expected you to do the same.”

“You’re a _weapon_ ,” Phoenix insists, his hands curling to fists at his sides as his chin dips down and his attention narrows to a glare to pin Miles where he stands. “You have a talent, why would you just give that up?”

Phoenix thinks Miles won’t answer, for a long moment. The question is all but rhetorical anyway; there’s a thousand things he would like to demand answers to, after all, and Miles is making it clear he has no intention to offer explanations for any of them. But then the other takes a breath, the sound loud in the taut silence of the hallway, and when he moves it’s to turn his head away, to shift the weight of his stare from Phoenix to the wall in front of him.

“Weapons get hurt,” Miles says, the words still harsh but tense, now, like they’re bearing a paper-thin layer of composure over something far closer to pain than what went before. Phoenix can see Miles’s throat work on a swallow, can see the shift of the other’s jaw as he steadies himself. “Death Weapons more than anyone. All it takes is a moment of distraction from a meister and--” His voice breaks off, his lips press tight together as if to pin back whatever force of words are trying to break free of him. There’s a pause of silence, the quiet so absolute it’s deafening; Phoenix can’t even hear the sound of his own breathing, for how still everything is.

“It’s better to be a meister,” Miles says, dropping the words into the silence in the hallway like stones into a still pond. “I’m the only person I trust with my own safety.”

Phoenix’s throat is tight. He feels like he’s going to cry. “Miles--”

“Come on,” Miles says, pitching his voice loud so it’s clear the words aren’t meant for Phoenix and turning on his heel without waiting for a reply. “We still have things to do, Gumshoe. Unless you’d prefer to stay here chitchatting? I can find myself another weapon if it’s too much trouble for you.”

“Ah!” Miles’s partner gasps from over Phoenix’s shoulder, sounding as shocked as if the other’s words have jolted electricity into his veins. “No sir! Right away!” He steps forward at once, jogging in his haste to catch up with his partner, but Miles is already walking away down the hall.

“See you two later,” the stranger says, flashing a grin that falls somewhere between encouraging and apologetic as he lifts his hand to wave; and then he’s looking back at Miles’s shoulders and giving way to a full-out run to catch up with the length of the other’s strides. “Hang on a sec, sir!” He falls into step with Miles at the end of the hallway, turning his head to say something too soft and distant for Phoenix to hear; and then the two of them turn the corner, and Phoenix is left alone in the hallway with Maya at his back and the empty walls of the Academy in front of him.

He hadn’t thought it was possible to feel so homesick in such a familiar place.


	10. Lost

“I don’t believe him!” Maya seethes over her plate. “How much of a jerk can you _be_?”

“He’s not that bad,” Phoenix attempts, aware even as he offers the words how weak they sound even to his own ears. “How’s your hamburger?”

“Delicious,” Maya says around the tension of her frown. She reaches for a handful of fries and eats them with the most frustrated energy Phoenix has ever seen from a girl halfway through a plate of food as big as her head. “That has nothing to do with the fact that your friend is _horribly_ rude.”

“He must have his reasons,” Phoenix says. He’s struggling to keep up his defense of Miles; he’s rather more inclined to agree with Maya than otherwise, even if he’s refraining from applying the judgment to his friend’s core character. If he can even call him that anymore; Phoenix is uncomfortably aware that Miles would be all too likely to balk at that designation at Phoenix’s lips. “I don’t know what happened to him, I haven’t seen him in years.”

“ _I_ know,” Maya grumbles. “He went away and became a _jerk_. How could he be so rude to you after not seeing you for so long?”

Phoenix hunches his shoulders, feeling a little like he’s trying to sink into the space currently occupied by his chest. “I don’t know,” he mumbles, fixing his gaze on the table in front of him rather than trying to look up to meet the righteous indignation in Maya’s furious stare. “Maybe there’s a reason he didn’t get in touch with me over all these years.”

Maya’s huff is loud and gusting. “You mean that he didn’t want to?” she snaps, lifting a hand to gesture with a french fry. “Don’t be stupid, Phoenix, of course he would have wanted to. Everyone would want to be your friend, you’re great.”

Phoenix snorts at this abrupt turn in Maya’s rhetoric. “You said yourself he was a jerk. Doesn’t that mean he can ditch me if he wants?”

“Sure,” Maya agrees, with more speed than Phoenix expects. “He _could_ , even though he’d have to be crazy. You’re too awesome for that.”

Phoenix can feel his mouth tug on the very beginning of a smile, the first he’s even come close to mustering since that overwhelming meeting in the DWMA hallway. “Thanks, Maya.”

“Of course,” Maya says, and punctuates by eating the french fry she was using to gesture. “It’s always easy to get free food out of you, for one thing.”

That actually startles a laugh out of Phoenix. “Oh, _thanks_ ,” he says, with significantly more sarcasm on his tone.

“You’re welcome,” Maya says, with lilting innocence on hers; but then she’s setting her hand down on the table in front of her and leaning in over the space of the surface. “Seriously though. This doesn’t have anything to do with you, you know that right?” Phoenix blinks, startled right out of his temporary amusement and underlying unhappiness by this unexpected claim, and Maya heaves a sigh as if he’s utterly failed to see some patently obvious thing. “You don’t, do you?”

“Maya,” Phoenix says, speaking slowly and feeling a little bit like he’s edging his way out over thin ice. “I have absolutely _no_ idea what you’re trying to say anymore.”

Maya rolls her eyes, as if the emotional whiplash she’s been giving Phoenix is perfectly intelligible and it’s Phoenix’s own fault he hasn’t been able to make any kind of sense out of what she’s saying. “Listen,” she says, reaching across the table to press a hand to his arm for all the world like she’s his grandmother instead of several years his juniot. “It’s super obvious. Your friend was a total jerk to you after meeting again for the first time in years.”

“Thanks,” Phoenix says. “That’s not the part I was having trouble understanding.”

“But that has nothing to do with you,” Maya continues, speaking louder so her voice carries over Phoenix’s dry protest. “It’s not because he hates you or anything.”

Phoenix can feel his forehead creasing into confusion. “What?” he asks. “Do you mean because he’s always been this way? Listen, I know you didn’t know him when he was a kid, and he must have left a pretty bad impression just now, but he’s not usually like that. That wasn’t really Miles.”

“Yeah,” Maya says. “I mean, I’m taking your word for it, but sure, you’re probably right. He was putting on an act more than being himself, that’s for sure. The only question is what is it that had him so defensive.”

“Yeah,” Phoenix says without really listening. “I promise, if you could see the way he was when we…” and then his delayed-reaction brain catches up with his mouth, and his words die to silence on his lips. “Wait, _what_?”

“He’s really upset,” Maya says, like this conclusion is perfectly obvious. She lifts her hand from Phoenix’s arm so she can reach for another french fry; apparently her self-assured judgment is giving way to the demands of hunger and the promise of the lunch still in front of her. “I dunno what about but it’s got nothing to do with you. You haven’t seen each other in years, anyway, and he’s definitely been upset for a while.” She pauses to down a pair of fries in quick succession and follow them up with a bite of her hamburger; Phoenix stays quiet, staring at her and waiting for the inevitable conclusion to her statement. “Whatever it is that has him so angry he’s been carrying it for a while.”

“What…” Phoenix starts, and then shakes his head to clear the fractured mess of his thoughts so he can start fresh. “How do you know that?”

“Huh?” Maya pauses from the attention she’s giving to her lunch to blink up at Phoenix. “It’s totally obvious. Didn’t you notice the way he reacted to what you were saying?” She swallows a bite of food and looks back to her plate to collect another. “He was getting super tense about really trivial things. It had nothing to do with you, he was just pissy about whatever was going on in his own head.”

Phoenix stares at her. “How do you notice this stuff?”

“What?” Maya scoffs. “It’s easy, duh. You didn’t realize because you were in the middle of having a breakdown about your best friend turning out to be a jerk.” She eats another french fry. “It was easy to see from next to you both. Anyone could have told you that.”

Phoenix rather doubts that. He suspects Miles’s current weapon partner noticed no such thing. “You’re not giving yourself enough credit.”

“Sure I am,” Maya says; but then she tips her head to the side, flashing her teeth in a grin as she looks up through the shadow of her bangs at Phoenix. “Does that mean you’ll buy me a milkshake to go along with lunch?”

“I’m already over budget for the month,” Phoenix tells her. “Unless you want to buy yourself dessert you’re out of luck.”

Maya shrugs. “Oh well.” She returns to her meal, apparently mollified by the conversational turn enough to let the issue of Miles’s worth as a human being go, and Phoenix is left to stare unseeing at the wall of the restaurant and turn over Maya’s words in his head. She’s not wrong, he realizes the longer he thinks about it; Miles had certainly been unreasonably touchy about relatively minor details, and significantly calmer in the gaps between them. The more Phoenix thinks about it the more he can see the framework of Miles’s response build itself around some piece of history Phoenix himself doesn’t know, some vital chunk of information that he can see the outline of even if he doesn’t know what it is.

“Wait,” he says, frowning as he turns Maya’s words over in his head to unfold the full meaning of them. “Why did you say he was a jerk, then? If something horrible happened to him…”

Maya looks up from her plate to fix him with her full attention, and there’s no smile at her lips this time. It’s surprising how much older she looks when she’s not grinning or laughing; again Phoenix has that eerie feeling of seeing Mia, like Maya is embodying her sister’s spirit for the span of a few brief heartbeats.

“That doesn’t give him the right to be mean,” Maya says, her tone low enough that it grants the statement more weight than it might have otherwise. “He deserves sympathy for whatever happened to him but that doesn’t mean he has to make everyone else miserable because he hasn’t dealt with it.” She looks back to her plate and reaches for another fry, and suddenly she’s herself again, a young girl finishing her lunch with the weight of unusual sincerity tugging the corners of her mouth down towards a frown. “It’s not like he’s the only person here who’s ever lost something.”

Phoenix can hardly argue with that.


	11. Whisper

“Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves?” Phoenix asks as he follows Maya through the front door of the Academy, still slightly breathless from the climb up the daunting line of stairs that forms the famous front of the school. Even after years of going up and down said stairs at least once a day, he still has to take a moment to collect himself again after an ascension; it hardly seems fair that Maya can all but sprint up them without showing any signs of fatigue by the time they reach the top. Phoenix wonders if that’s some part of the rigorous family training she mentions sometimes; or maybe it’s just yet another case of Maya herself overflowing with more energy than is anything like reasonable in any given situation. “We still need to go out to complete our last assignment, it’s not like we’re going to be able to actually choose from any of the missions that are posted right now.”

“It’s not about choosing a new mission,” Maya tells him without so much as a flicker in her overabundance of cheer. She looks to be walking down the hall at a perfectly reasonable pace; Phoenix can’t explain how it is that he is having such a hard time keeping up with her that he needs to all but jog alternate steps just to keep her in earshot. “Of course I know we can’t have two missions at once, don’t be silly.”

“Okay,” Phoenix sighs. “What _is_ it about, then?”

“It’s fun!” Maya takes the next turn with nearly a skip to her step; Phoenix pauses for a moment to huff a silent sigh of exhaustion before he does actually break into a jog to catch up with her. Maya’s continuing down the hallway when he rounds the corner, proceeding without the least sign of alarm at how far behind her ostensible partner is trailing. “It’s cool to look at the different things we can look forward to doing next!”

Phoenix raises his gaze to the ceiling for some kind of sympathy that he knows he’s unlikely to receive from the weight of the dark beams overhead. “Of course,” he says, mostly to himself, and takes the last few steps at a run so he can reach out to grab Maya’s shoulder and hold her to a more reasonable pace. “I should have guessed you’d want to daydream instead of studying.”

Maya waves her hand to sweep aside this protest. “We can study later,” she says with unhesitating cheer. “Right now we’re going to look at the mission board!”

Phoenix doesn’t try to argue further. It’s always a pointless pursuit with Maya; her energy is unflagging, no matter how sure he is that she’ll eventually run out of enthusiasm, and with her pronounced tendency to outright ignore the things he says that she disagrees with any prolonged argument is more a waste of effort than anything else. Besides, this is a trivial enough point; even the additional climb up the flight of stairs is probably good exercise, Phoenix tells himself with only the faintest trace of bitterness as he follows Maya around the corner towards the wall where missions for the Academy students are posted. And if Maya finds it entertaining, he doesn’t mind indulging her in such simple amusement.

There’s a crowd in front of the board as they come into view. There’s usually at least a few students clustered around it; younger partners, sometimes, gazing up at the higher-level missions and daydreaming in much the same way Maya intends to, or higher ranks in the EAT class who are comparing different options and choosing based on their own preference instead of the rushed scramble that happens for the lower-ranked missions. But if there’s not a new batch of missions there’s never more than five or six students lingering in this space of the hallway; except that there’s at least two dozen there now, packing the space with closed-hunched shoulders and murmurs of voices that form a low roar. Phoenix hesitates at the end of the hall, frowning at this unexpected crowd; but Maya is continuing forward without any delay to her steps, and the hold Phoenix still has at her shoulder pulls him forward after her before he can entirely make up his mind to delve into the press of the crowd in front of them.

“I wonder what happened,” Maya says, speaking louder so the excitement of her voice will carry clearly over the sound of the other students. “Do you think there’s a new witch mission up or something?”

“No,” Phoenix says, still frowning; his greater height lets him see farther over the heads of the crowd than Maya can, and there’s no sign of anything unusual on the mission board itself, just the regular range of higher-level missions waiting a claimant and the blank space for the easier ones that have already been snapped up. There’s no reason he can see for the unusual activity of the group in front of them, nothing he can guess at as the cause; but Maya is continuing forward without hesitating, striding forward and into the crowd as if she belongs there. Phoenix is drawn in her wake, stumbling as the intention to keep an eye on his meister runs up against his own desire to avoid the uncomfortable press of the crowd, and then he’s moving through the middle of it, catching fragments of a handful of disjointed conversations as he goes.

“Did you actually see it happen?”

“I heard he had to be carried back here afterwards, they still have the whole street closed.”

“Was it really a witch in the city?”

“That’s what they’re supposed to do, anyway.”

“He can’t be all that good, can he?”

“Maybe it was the weapon’s fault, I heard he’s pretty new.”

“Are they going to be okay?”

“I heard he’s in a coma!”

“There was blood everywhere, I swear, my neighbor said she saw the whole thing.”

“Are you sure?”

“What were they fighting?”

“Shouldn’t they have had no problems?”

Phoenix trails to a stop, his feet ceasing their forward movement at the same time his attention is caught and held by the fragments of conversation he’s hearing. He can’t place any of them, can’t track any one back to its source and into a coherent narrative; but what he’s hearing is enough to run his blood to ice in his veins, to remind him with too-much clarity of a late night and a dark hallway, of Maya’s voice hiccuping over the tears he’s only ever seen her cry openly that one time, with only the shared loss between them to make them anything but the strangers they would have been otherwise. But this is vague, scattered, broken apart with the adrenaline that always comes alongside tragedy, the strange, frenetic excitement of a group desperate to pull apart all the details of some drama distant enough to be a hypothetical hurt instead of a real one; and Phoenix is turning away from Maya, leaving her to the mass of the people in front of them as he steps sideways and towards a cluster of people at random.

“I’m tellin’ y’all, it was the _meister_ ,” one of the students is saying as Phoenix pushes his way into the edge of the conversation. Her arms are crossed over her chest, her mouth is dragging hard into a frown of insistence; there’s a camera hanging around her neck, the weight of it dragging the collar of her jacket lopsided over her shoulder. “The weapon’s just a li’l bruised. I caught the whole thing on film!” as she lifts a hand to tap decisively at the side of her camera.

“That’s stupid, Lotta,” one of the others scoffs. “If it was so bad the weapon should have been on the frontlines, he should have _died_ before letting his meister get hurt.”

“I’m just tellin’ you what I saw!” Lotta insists, her voice going shrill with intensity. “If you don’t wanna believe the evidence of your own eyes--”

“What did you see?” Phoenix cuts in, without waiting for the girl to gain traction on the irritation rising to audibility in her throat. The rest of the group turns to stare at him, their eyes wide on surprise at his abrupt interruption, but Phoenix doesn’t look at them; he keeps his eyes on the girl turning to stare at him, keeps his focus fixed on her even as his heart beats the faster with irrational adrenaline. “What are you talking about?”

“The fight,” Lotta says at once, with a dismissive tone to the words that says they’re so obvious they shouldn’t need stating. “Of course.”

Phoenix sets his jaw. “ _What_ fight?”

Lotta blinks at him. “What? You dunno?” She stares at him for a moment, her whole expression wide and disbelieving. “You didn’t hear ‘bout it?” Phoenix shakes his head in quick negation; Lotta stares at him for a long moment, like she’s taking in this wholly impossible piece of information, before she lifts both shoulders in a huge shrug to push aside Phoenix’s distance from the school gossip. “There was a big fight this morning, real early, before the sun was all the way up. Top-tier meister and a Death Weapon, is what I hear--” she cuts herself off sharply and presses her lips tight together for a moment. “I saw ‘em myself. Out in the street, fightin’ a witch!”

“What happened?” Phoenix asks. There’s a touch at his sleeve, the weight of Maya’s fingers against his arm -- she must have picked him out of the crowd and come back towards him -- but he doesn’t look down to meet her eyes. “Who was it?”

“They got real banged up,” Lotta tells him. “Blood everywhere, it was all over the street before the headmaster showed up to take care of things. I thought they were both gonna die right there, like I was gonna be witness to an actual murder!” Her shoulders slump, like the energy is running out of her with the removal of this apparently longed-for possibility. “But they just got carried back here and I didn’t see ‘em since. No one did, I guess they’ve been shut up in the hospital all day.”

“Who was it?” Phoenix repeats, hoping with selfish desperation that it’s one of the other students, that it’s one of the other faculty, one of the long-standing residents of the school who got caught out of their element, even in a city anyone who’s lived here long should know like the back of their hand, that anyone who isn’t a newcomer…

“Don’t know ‘im,” Lotta says, with absolute honesty that falls totally uncaring of Phoenix’s hopes for a reprieve. “He was with that new Death Weapon, the guy who turns into handcuffs, you know, with the coat?” She shrugs again, dismissing this detail as easily as she dismissed Phoenix’s relative ignorance earlier. “He had on this weird pink suit and a lacy tie around his neck. Kinda overdressed for a fight, I thought, but he looked good in a sorta European way. Until he got all torn up, at least.”

“Oh fuck,” Phoenix says, feeling the words fall with cold certainty past his lips. His thoughts feel strange and echoey, like every word past Lotta’s lips has pushed him farther out from himself, until he’s hovering somewhere in the space above and behind his head instead of within it. “Miles.”

The hand at his sleeve tightens, Maya’s grip presses in hard against his arm. “ _Nick_.” Phoenix turns his head to look down; it’s only when he sees the wide-eyed fright in Maya’s eyes that he realizes she was speaking before, that she’s been saying something he hasn’t heard for the rising roar of panic in his ears.

“Dude.” That’s from Lotta; she’s staring at him too, when he lifts his head, her weight is rocked back on her heels like she’s a little bit afraid he’s bearing some contagious disease. “You don’t look too good.”

“I have to,” Phoenix says, hearing the words echoing in his chest, in his head, rattling inside the empty space inside him like they’re looking for a way to break free. “I have to go.” He takes a breath; and suddenly his chest is filling with pressure, his eyes are filling with heat, and when he exhales it comes out sounding like a sob.

“I have to go,” he says again; and he’s turning as fast as that, pulling away from Maya’s hold on his arm without feeling it, without noticing the way her hand slides free any more than he notices the way the crowd is falling silent and turning to look at him. They’re obstacles, nothing more, things to be maneuvered around so he can make it to the clear of the hallway; and then he’s free, and he’s leaning forward into a jog, and he’s running through the hallways of the Academy, trying to cover the distance between the mission wall and the hospital wing in record time.

He sprints up every flight of stairs on the way there and doesn’t even notice the gasp of his breathing rasping over the tension in his chest.


	12. Recover

They won’t let Phoenix into the hospital wing.

The hall was empty as he approached, bereft of any trace of the gossiping crowd downstairs; Phoenix hardly had time to be surprised by this before one of the nurses emerged at the sound of his footsteps and did his utmost to shoo Phoenix back out of the hallway. “There’s no visitors allowed,” the nurse had told Phoenix, with a weight to his scowl that said this wasn’t the first time he’d had to chase off excitable bystanders; but “I know him,” Phoenix had blurted, and he doesn’t know if it was the rambling explanation he tried to offer or his obvious panic that convinced the nurse as to his sincerity, but he’s granted permission to wait in the hallway while whatever is continuing behind the shut door carries on.

Phoenix can’t sit still. There’s a chair set alongside the door, and a wider bench on the far side of the hallway; but he can’t stop moving, because if he holds still the horrified panic of possibility will catch up to him and he’s sure he’ll start crying, or shaking, or screaming, and he isn’t sure he’ll be able to stop if he lets any of those free of his lips. So he moves instead, wearing a path for himself down the exact middle of the hospital hallway and ruffling through his hair like the texture of the strands against his palm will somehow be able to ground him to another reality, to a world where Miles isn’t behind the locked door of a hospital room and Phoenix isn’t waiting for a verdict on his well-being.

 _I should have been there_.

It’s a stupid thought, Phoenix knows. He hasn’t seen Miles in years, has barely spoken to him since the other’s abrupt and unexpected return; by all rights the framework of the friendship they had as children should be part of his past, should have faded to the sepia-tinged nostalgia of childhood along with so many other details of Phoenix’s life before he arrived at the Academy. But it hasn’t, it never so much as flickered; even while working with Mia, even after partnering with Maya, Phoenix still finds himself startling awake from dreams of children’s laughter and silver hair, still finds himself standing still in the middle of the Academy hallway as he loses himself in wondering what Miles is doing now, where he’s ended up and how his life is proceeding. The other’s return felt more like a sense of fate than the surprise it honestly ought to have been, like a puzzle piece fitting back into place even if Miles’s prickly response resisted an easy return to the relationship that Phoenix has been holding open in his heart for all these years. Miles had shoved away, had turned his back and walked away as if he truly felt no sense of the connection that has so tethered Phoenix to the past they had; but that didn’t stop Phoenix from feeling it, and it isn’t stopping him from feeling it now, from feeling the burden of invented responsibility pressing down on him as if he might have been able to stop this result if he had been there, if something had been different than it was.

Maybe they could have kept working together, if Miles were still at the Academy. He became a meister, after all, it’s not as if they’re incompatible on that level at least. Phoenix would have been happy to partner with Miles instead of spending all those years alone; he wonders who Miles was working with, if he enjoyed his partners or if he struggled with them, if he had to fight his way to success as Phoenix still is or if it came naturally to him, the way it always seemed to when they were children. Phoenix wants to know all of it, wants to fill in all the gaps that time and experience have created between them; he wants to know why Miles is so tense, now, wants to know why he left the Academy and where he went and how he decided to become a meister instead of a weapon, if it was a positive decision or a negative one. If he regrets leaving, if he had trouble making friends, if he ever missed Larry and Phoenix and the easy friendship the three of them formed. Where he went, what kind of a life he’s led, who he’s become; Phoenix wants to know everything, wants to relearn all the details of the man his childhood friend has become and form that connection all over again, reforge it into something stronger and better even than the simple, innocent affection they had before. He hadn’t realized how much he wanted that, how much he was hoping for it in the back of his mind; but now, with Miles locked away from him by the effect of the injuries he sustained in a fight Phoenix almost didn’t hear about, all Phoenix can feel is the press of panic knotting harder against his chest, climbing up his throat to all but choke him with the fear that he’s going to lose this too, that the second chance Miles presents will slide through his fingers the way Mia did, that if he blinks and hesitates for a moment Miles will be gone past redemption and he’ll never even get the chance to--

“Sir.”

Phoenix pivots sharply on his heel to look back at the hospital door behind him. The nurse is there again, standing in the doorway and watching him with resignation in his eyes; but he’s not stepping out into the hallway, isn’t pushing the door shut behind him so he can fix Phoenix with the full force of his scowl. He’s waiting instead, framed by the doorway around him and with his hand bracing the weight of the door open, and it’s while Phoenix is still staring that he takes a half-step back to flatten himself against the surface in an invitation perfectly clear even before he lifts his free hand to gesture. “You wanted to say hello?”

“ _Oh_ ,” Phoenix says, and “ _yes_ ” and he’s moving forward so fast he almost stumbles over his own feet in his haste to get to the door to the hospital room. The nurse presses himself harder against the flat of the door, hissing frustration in the back of his throat as Phoenix pushes past him, but Phoenix doesn’t spare time for more than a quick “Sorry!” as he steps in to the oversanitized bite of the air inside the room.

“He’s pretty out of it,” the nurse informs Phoenix as the other moves past. “He’s not going to be up for any kind of conversation, if that’s what you were hoping for.” He sounds sour, clearly frustrated with Phoenix’s impatient waiting, but Phoenix just nods in immediate agreement to this statement.

“That’s fine,” he says, already moving across the room towards the thin curtain pulled forward to block the view of the back half of the room from the front. “I just want to see him.”

“If you say so,” the nurse sighs; but Phoenix is stepping up to the edge of the curtain, and coming around the thin layer of the barrier, and he’s not listening to the what the other is saying at all.

It’s strange to see Miles in a hospital bed. Phoenix has always seen him properly dressed: in the aggressive dignity of the school uniform, when they were children, and in his memorable suit for that one interaction they’ve had as adults. But he’s given up that formality here, exchanged the crisp-tailored lines of a jacket and the polish of his shoes for the thin of a hospital gown over his chest, and the layers of a few blankets drawn up over his legs, and an array of IV tubes taped in place against the inside of one arm angled face-up over the blankets. He has a bandage stuck down against his forehead, and a bruise rising dark across one cheekbone; whatever color he usually musters under the pale of his skin is utterly gone, leaving him a study in monochrome against the brilliant white sheets of the bed. He looks exhausted, thinner than Phoenix realized he was and pale with the aftereffects of pain and terrifyingly, immediately fragile; and Phoenix has never seen anything look as wonderful as Miles does to him right then.

“Oh my god,” he breathes, and reaches out to clutch at a handful of the curtain as if the thin fabric will do anything at all to support the sudden tremor in his knees, the wave of relief so strong that it threatens his basic ability to stand upright for a breathless moment. “Miles.”

Miles stares at Phoenix for a long breath, like he’s trying to recognize him or perhaps trying to determine if he’s actually there; Phoenix can see the struggle for focus behind the silver of the other’s eyes, can see the crease of effort forming itself against Miles’s forehead. Finally:

“You,” Miles sighs, and shuts his eyes in apparent exhaustion. “What are you doing here?”

“I heard you got hurt,” Phoenix says. His voice is catching over the words, going ragged with telltale emotion, but he doesn’t try to hold it back. His eyes are starting to burn; he blinks hard to restrain the tears, to keep his vision clear so he can stare at Miles talking and breathing and  _alive_  in front of him. “I thought you were…” and his throat closes up so hard that for a moment he can’t speak, even to voice the fear that is being proved groundless with every shift of Miles’s chest on his breathing. Phoenix ducks his head and takes a ragged breath; when he looks back up his lashes are wet with the tears he can’t hold back, even for the cause of meeting Miles’s exhausted gaze. “Are you okay?”

“This is a hospital,” Miles tells him, with some strain on his words; it’s only as he shifts his outstretched arm against the sheets that Phoenix realizes that tension was meant to be sarcasm, that the other’s exhaustion has pulled all the edge from his voice to leave even his attempts at condescension too weak to land. “I’m hardly on a vacation.”

“I know,” Phoenix says, without feeling even a prickle of frustration at Miles’s feeble attempts at coldness; if anything it makes his throat just close up the tighter around the too-obvious effects of the other’s recent injuries. “I just needed to know if...if you--”

“I’m not going to  _die_ , Wright,” Miles says, and turns his head away to stare fixedly out the window of the hospital room. The sun is brilliant on the other side of the glass, it must be blinding to look at, but Miles sets his jaw and Phoenix gets the very strong impression he won’t be looking away any time soon. “If you’ve satisfied yourself that I’m not yet at death’s door, your presence here is hardly conducive to my recovery.”

Phoenix ducks his head, going through the motions of understanding at the same time he lets the curtain go so he can lift his sleeve to swipe roughly at his eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I will be,” Miles says, sounding exhausted, like he lacks the strength even to muster true frustration beyond the heavy weight on the words. “I need rest, which you’re not helping.”

“I know,” Phoenix says. At the other side of the room the nurse is moving, approaching with a frown Phoenix can see out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t look away from Miles. “I’m really glad you’re okay, Miles.”

Miles shuts his eyes and huffs a sigh. “Goodbye, Wright.”

“Get better soon,” Phoenix says; and then the nurse is reaching out to take hold of his elbow, and urging him towards the door with gentle but unbreakable force, and he has no choice but to stumble away from Miles’s bedside and towards the exit to the room. He keeps watching the other as long as he can, looking back as the nurse pulls him towards the door with some platitudes about giving the patient time to rest and recover and that Phoenix himself has nothing to worry about at this point; but Phoenix doesn’t hear the words, all his attention is holding to the bed behind him.

Miles doesn’t open his eyes again before Phoenix is pulled past the edge of the curtain, but the sunlight streaming through the window is enough to color his lashes to gold.


	13. Sympathy

“ _Nick!_ ”

The call comes from across the whole distance of the restaurant, shouted to a volume that makes Phoenix cringe even as he turns his head to track the sound of the nickname that identifies the speaker as precisely as it indicates him as the subject. Maya’s standing in front of the window in the corner of the room, pushed back from her table and standing up from her chair with no concern for the passive frustration of sideways glances or the more aggressive murmurs of judgment from those around her; she has both arms waving above her head, gesturing wildly to Phoenix as if he might not hear her shouts. “Nick, hey, over here!”

“Ah,” Phoenix says, softly enough that it’s only an acknowledgement to himself; and then he lifts a hand to wave response, at least enough to indicate to Maya that he has in fact seen her gesticulations. He ducks his head in a nod to the host standing at the front of the restaurant and flashes an apologetic smile on his partner’s behalf, and then he moves forward to make his way through the space as rapidly as he can, before Maya decides she needs to flag him down further.

He succeeds in that. Maya is sitting again when Phoenix draws level with the table she’s selected, grinning brilliantly up at him from over the plate of dinner she has apparently cajoled out of the man with her. He’s sitting on the other side on the table, his shoulders hunched in over a plate of his own and his head ducked down to fix himself with complete focus on the meal before him; he only glances up as Phoenix draws the extra seat back from the edge of the table, and even then only offers a few fingers lifted from his fork in a casual gesture of welcome.

“Hey there,” he says, and swallows hard so he can flash a grin that reminds Phoenix of some measure of the sparkling optimism always so present in Maya’s expression. “Good to see you again, pal.”

“Sure,” Phoenix says, because this seems the most appropriate thing to say even if he has a very fragile grasp on how he came to this point or why, exactly, Maya would find it so crucial that he come out to join her and Miles’s weapon partner at a restaurant while the fourth obvious addition to the group is still behind the shut door of a hospital room and refusing visitors on what Phoenix suspects to be principle. Phoenix reaches for something else to say and runs up against the white bandage wrapping around the other weapon’s head to cut a clean strip of white through the short-cropped dark of his hair. “Are you okay?”

“Mm,” Gumshoe says, nodding over his latest bite of food before he swallows enough to allow for a more coherent reply. “I’m just fine. A little bruise is nothing to worry about,” as he lifts his hand to gesture vaguely towards his head. He lowers his hand to the table again, still gazing at the food in front of him, but his smile is fading, his expression disintegrating as his focus slides away to something in memory more than in the present. “Guess I’ve got my partner to thank for that.”

Phoenix’s polite smile flickers, following Gumshoe’s into the far more somber subject of the failed fight weighting heavier at the other’s shoulders than even the burden of his usual jacket. “What happened?” he asks; and then, as Maya hisses and Phoenix realizes how intrusive his question is: “I’m so sorry, of course you don’t have to talk about it if it--”

“Nah,” Gumshoe says, and straightens from his plate to reach for the half-full cup of coffee alongside him instead. “I don’t mind.” He swallows a mouthful of liquid and sets it down with a sigh like he’s bracing himself. “Frankly, I think I might feel better if I _did_ have someone to talk to.”

Phoenix grimaces too-much understanding. “Yeah, I know how that is. Does Miles not want to hear about it?”

Gumshoe huffs a laugh without much humor behind it. “He doesn’t want to _see_ anyone, much less talk to ‘em. The nurses say he’s recovering but I haven’t been able to get in there since they kicked me out after the fight.”

Phoenix blinks surprise. “What? But even I--” He cuts himself off too late to avert the accidental injury to Gumshoe’s feelings; but:

“I know,” Gumshoe says, with a weight on the words that makes it clear this information is far from new to him. “Maybe he just doesn’t want to have deal with a weapon too much of a failure to protect him in the middle of a fight.”

“That’s not true,” Maya cuts in. Both Gumshoe and Phoenix lift their heads to blink shock at her; she’s leaning over the flat of the table to frown intensity at Gumshoe. “You’re not being fair to your partner. He can’t possibly blame you for what happened in that fight!”

Gumshoe’s frown deepens on uncertainty. “But I--”

“You can’t count Phoenix like a normal person,” Maya says, reaching out to push at Phoenix’s arm by way of making her reference clear. “He probably stood outside the hospital door for _hours_ , he doesn’t know how to give up.” She leans back in her chair and folds her arms decisively over her chest. “Besides, he and Miles were childhood friends, that has to carry some special weight.”

“Childhood friends?” Gumshoe repeats; and then, as he looks to Phoenix with his eyes going wider with shock, “Woah, wait, _you’re_ his Academy friend?”

Phoenix can feel his face go warm with inexplicable embarrassment at being thus called out. “Well, me and Larry both, it’s not like it was just--”

“Oh wow,” Gumshoe says, sounding entirely awestruck, as if he’s only just found out Phoenix is a celebrity in hiding. “I can’t believe it. You’re the only thing he ever talked about from before, plus his dad, of course.”

“His dad,” Phoenix repeats. The phrase twinges something in the back of his mind, some half-held thought from so many years past he can’t remember, now, what the structure of it was before he let it go; but he can remember a conversation from childhood with crystal clarity, can still call up the light in a young Miles’s silver eyes that is so notably lacking in their stony grey depths today. “He’s a Death Weapon, right?”

Gumshoe ducks his head into a nod. “Yeah, he was. Mr. Edgeworth doesn’t mention it much but he grew up here in the city, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Phoenix says, but he’s not really listening to the question; he’s frowning at the specifics of Gumshoe’s words, creasing his forehead over the weight they carry even though Gumshoe himself seems wholly unaware of what he’s saying. “‘Was’?”

“Yeah,” Gumshoe says, and reaches out for his coffee cup again. “I’ve heard Gregory Edgeworth was one of the best weapons there was before the accident.”

Phoenix feels like he’s standing on the precipice of a cliff, like every breath he’s taking is filling his lungs with the high-altitude chill of knowledge he doesn’t want to look at and doesn’t want to have but can’t pull away from. “What accident?”

“Wait,” Maya says, her voice so suddenly weighted with seriousness that it pulls Phoenix’s attention sideways and away from Gumshoe’s wide-eyed innocence. “That was his _dad_?”

“ _What_ was his dad?” Phoenix asks, and looks back to Gumshoe. “What happened?”

Gumshoe shrugs his shoulders up under his coat; Phoenix can almost see the discomfort straining along his spine. “I don’t know much about it, pal. Mr. Edgeworth doesn’t talk about it and it’s not the kind of thing the Academy likes to brag about, you know? Just that his dad died when he was a kid and he decided to be a meister after that.”

“I know about it,” Maya says, her voice still in that soft, horrified range that drags Phoenix’s attention helplessly sideways. “That was when sis came to take over, was because one of the Death Weapons died in the middle of a mission to go after a Kishin egg.” She tightens her arms around herself and ducks her head down so her hair falls to shadow in front of her face. “I didn’t know that was his _dad_ , though.”

“Wait,” Phoenix says, feeling like he’s trying to fumble through the pieces of a puzzle in the dark, like he’s trying to form a picture he can’t see until it’s already completed. “Miles’s dad died?”

“Yeah,” Gumshoe says. “Years back when he was a kid. Weren’t you friends with him then? I woulda thought you would know about it better than any of us.”

Phoenix shakes his head, feeling his skin prickle with numb horror. “No,” he says. “No, we were just weapon partners together until--”

 _Until he left_ , his mind fills in for him. _Until a Death Weapon came to pull him out of class for something serious enough they didn’t tell us about it and I never saw him again_.

“Oh,” he says; and then, tipping forward to press his elbows to the edge of the table, to press his palms over his mouth: “ _Oh_.”

“You didn’t know?” Gumshoe asks.

Phoenix shakes his head. After a moment he tips his head forward to cover his face with his hands, to breathe in against the inside of his wrists as if he’ll somehow be able to stabilize himself against the force of the epiphany hitting him. “No,” he says, hearing his voice come back to him muffled to softness against the edges of his sleeves. “He just disappeared one day and we never heard from him again.”

“Oh jeez,” Gumshoe breathes. “That’s rough, pal.”

A hand touches against Phoenix’s shoulder, fingers tighten against his arm: Maya, reaching out over the distance between them to offer the support of a friendly touch as Phoenix’s whole perception of that brief event years in the past restructures itself and becomes something wholly different than it was. “The Academy doesn’t announce when they lose a Death Weapon,” she says, presumably to Gumshoe across the table. Her voice sounds very nearly calm; if Phoenix couldn’t feel how tight her hold on his arm is, if he didn’t know Maya as well as he does, he thinks he might believe that she’s actually just a helpful source of information instead of someone who has experienced this particular detail firsthand. “It’s a dangerous job and they don’t like to publicize the accidents and catch the family up in the media rush.”

Gumshoe’s exhale is heavy with the force of his realization. “I heard Mr. Edgeworth was training with a famous meister and an adopted sister since he was a kid, but I didn’t know that was why.”

“They must have just taken him away,” Phoenix says, speaking more to himself than for anyone else. “From the DWMA, when his father died, they just pulled him out of class and…” He can’t finish the words; his throat is closing up, his breathing catching too hard in his chest for him to take a full inhale. “ _God_.”

“Nick?” Maya asks. Her hand at Phoenix’s arm tightens, then eases fractionally. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Phoenix says, because it’s true, as far as he himself is concerned. He takes a breath and lets his hands fall from his face to stare unseeing at the middle of the table. “I just…” He sighs a long, shaky exhale. “Poor Miles.”

There’s nothing any of them can add to that.


	14. Lonely

“This was a terrible idea,” Phoenix mumbles, mostly to himself, as he trails Maya down the hallway towards the empty classroom that will be serving them as a makeshift practice space. “I’m not ready for this yet.”

“You’ve been an EAT-class weapon for  _years_ ,” Maya reminds him, delivering the statement with careless honesty as she glances back over her shoulder at Phoenix following in her wake. “Other students start practicing group Resonance in their first six months. When  _are_  you going to be ready?”

“Not now,” Phoenix tells her, gaining some force for his petulant refusal precisely because he recognizes how childish he sounds. “I haven’t had a steady partner since I moved up to the EAT class. I’ve never successfully Resonated with  _anyone_ , I don’t see how jumping to group Resonance is supposed to help me.”

“It’s a matter of throwing you in the deep end!” Maya informs him with the usual unassailable cheer she brings to any interaction. “They think you’ll respond well to pressure so they want to put you under it.”

“The deep end,” Phoenix repeats, feeling his stomach drop into freefall as Maya reaches out for the door of the classroom. “What happens if I don’t swim like they’re expecting?”

“Then you sink.”

It’s another voice that speaks from over Phoenix’s shoulder; not Maya’s girlish chirp but a lower range, tense in spite of the purring vowels that turn the words into something close to poetry even as they snap into the air. Phoenix jumps with what he is sure is visible force, nearly stumbling as he turns to look behind him only to find Miles there, watching him with his arms crossed rather than already inside the classroom where Phoenix expected to find him.

“Oh,” Phoenix breathes, feeling his heart skip into a faster pace in his chest as his face colors with self-consciousness. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Obviously,” Miles says, and breaks eye contact to step forward past Phoenix with more aggression under the movement than the expansive width of the hallway demands. Phoenix stares at him as the other pushes past him, his attention knocked right out of coherency by Miles’s unexpected appearance; it’s not until Gumshoe trails in Miles’s wake with a “Hey, pal” that he’s able to blink himself back to the present.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” he asks, striding forward to close the gap between himself and Miles as the other approaches the door and nods gratitude to Maya holding it open. “You’re only just out of the hospital, we could wait until you’re more healed.”

“I was discharged  _because_  I was healed,” Miles says without turning around as he takes the lead into the room. Phoenix follows, only pausing to fumble the lightswitch on and flood the room in pale illumination. “I assure you I’m as fit for this as you.”

Phoenix huffs self-deprecation. “That’s not particularly encouraging, you know.”

“That’s only because you’re underestimating yourself,” Miles says. “I see you haven’t grown out of that bad habit yet.” He pivots on his heel and turns to pin the full force of that silver gaze on the other’s features. “It’s no wonder you haven’t made yourself a Death Weapon yet.”

Phoenix can feel his jaw set, can feel his shoulders tense with the aggressive resistance that only ever seems to hit him when Miles is around to draw it out of him. “I’m not the only one who hasn’t done what he said he would. Weren’t  _you_  supposed to be a Death Weapon yourself?” he says, and immediately regrets the cut of the words for how carelessly close they hit to Miles’s childhood trauma. He’s flinching back from the speech, expecting Miles’s expression to harden into the rigid mask that only covers and doesn’t replace the surge of emotion that will surely answer the words; but Miles just looks at him, his eyes fixed on Phoenix and his mouth still surprisingly soft on consideration.

“I  _knew_ you hadn’t lost your spark,” he says, so softly Phoenix can barely hear him and isn’t certain the words were meant for him at all; and then Miles lifts his chin, and tosses his hair back from his face, and lets his arms uncross from the protective fold he had over his chest.

“We’ll figure out a way to make you Resonate,” he says, and he sounds like he used to, as if he’s reached right back over those years that have made him into the meister he is instead of the weapon he was to reclaim some of that childish certainty, some measure of that focused light behind his eyes. “You’re not going to sink on  _my_  watch, Phoenix Wright.”

Phoenix blinks, taken aback by this wholly unanticipated response from the man who resembles the boy he used to know more now than he has since his return; but Miles doesn’t give him a chance to respond, just looks over Phoenix’s shoulder and lifts a hand to gesture peremptorily to Gumshoe still in the doorway with Maya. “Come here, Gumshoe, I can hardly Resonate without a weapon.”

“Ah!” Gumshoe says, and comes forward with hasty steps, all but stumbling as he crosses the distance of the classroom in answer to Miles’s gesture. “Yes, of course sir.” There’s a glow of light, the illumination of transformation catching to cling at the other’s dark hair and heavy coat, and then the outline of his presence starts to disintegrate and reform into a smaller, denser shape.

“You’ll need to transform too,” Miles says, still looking at the light of Gumshoe shifting so it takes Phoenix a moment to realize the words are intended for him. “We can’t possibly Resonate with you still in human form.”

“Oh,” Phoenix says, feeling foolish as Miles reaches out to close his hold around the loops of the heavy handcuffs Gumshoe has transformed himself into, the bands of iron held together by a short length of metal. Maya is coming forward as she leaves the door to swing itself shut; Phoenix glances back at her as his face heats with the start of self-consciousness. “Yeah, I guess I should.”

It’s not hard to find his weapon form. Phoenix has done this an uncounted number of times, even if he’s by and large lacked a meister partner to ease him through the transformation process; practice has made up for the assistance he lacked, anyway, and it’s a simple thing to shut his eyes and let himself slip sideways and into the secondary form, the existence that runs through his veins as an integral part of him, as certain as the steady beat of his heart. There’s a prickle of embarrassment in the back of his head, as there always is when he’s transforming for the first time in front of someone new; but Gumshoe went first, after all, and both Maya and Miles knows Phoenix for what he is, it’s hardly as if Miles is going to be surprised Phoenix hasn’t changed over the years apart. So Phoenix reaches for smooth-polished wood, and a weight affixed to the end of a narrow handle, and by the time the light around him has faded to give him back his awareness of his surroundings he’s inside the shape of the gavel that has been his own since he was a child.

“Good,” Miles says. His voice sounds slightly different with Phoenix transformed; there’s less of an edge on it, it’s harder to pick out the details of the strain that he hasn’t been without in the few times Phoenix has interacted with him since his return. It’s soothing, in a way, to have Miles sound so much as he used to, as if Phoenix has dropped back by years by fitting himself into the space of his weapon form. “Now. You two have never properly Resonated with each other, have you?”

Phoenix shakes his head, forgetting for a moment that the motion will be utterly lost to the restrictions of his current form; but Maya is moving too, he can sense the motion of her head in his periphery in the strange, distant way of his weapon form, like he’s aware of the movement in the air around him as much as seeing it directly with a more human perception of the world. “Never.”

“Very well.” Miles doesn’t sound upset by this declaration; he sounds more like he’s confirming a known fact, or maybe like he’s settling himself into place around the structure of Maya’s statement. “This will be a bit more challenging, then, but it’s still worth the attempt.” He shifts his stance and braces his feet steady against the floor; his fingers tighten against the loop of the handcuffs in his grip, his thumb settles against the weight of the iron. “As part of the Fey family, you have plenty of experience with this, I assume?”

A nod from Maya this time. “Yes.”

Phoenix blinks, or at least has the vague impression of blinking; it’s mildly disorienting, as it always is, to experience the action as if he’s really taking it even though the wood of his weapon form is showing no sign of the movement. He can’t guess what Maya and Miles are talking about; but:

“Very good,” Miles says, as if something has been satisfactorily confirmed for him. “You know what to do from here, then.”

Maya nods again. “Yep!”

“Wright.” Phoenix jumps, startled so much by this direct address he almost loses his grip on his weapon form; but he manages to cling to it, and Maya maintains her hold on his handle even as the weight twists in her grip. Phoenix grimaces silent apology into Maya’s awareness of him in her head, but most of his attention is given over to the sound of Miles’s voice, and the focus of those grey eyes fixed upon him with all the level attention Phoenix recalls from childhood. “You’re going to need to relax. Understand?” Phoenix isn’t sure if he should nod, or move through what little motion he can effect, or maybe ask Maya to speak for him; but Miles is continuing on, apparently leaving his question to stand as more rhetorical than otherwise. “You’ve never Resonated before and this will likely feel a little strange; you might drop into Resonance with your meister and then the group, or just fall into Resonance with all three of us at once. In either case, you’ll need to leave yourself open for the connection; you don’t have to reach out or struggle for it, we’ll come to you. Just don’t flinch back from it when it comes.”

“Right,” Maya says aloud. “He understands.”

Phoenix raises a nonexistent eyebrow.  _Do I?_

 _Yeah_ , Maya tells him inside the shared space of their head.  _It’s easy. Just try it and you’ll see_.

Phoenix doesn’t protest. It’s not as if he has much of a choice in any case; Miles is already shutting his eyes and letting his shoulders relax into the easy grace of readiness. He looks like he could move at any moment, like the whole of his body could become the figurative weapon Phoenix knows he is literally; but he’s holding to his human form, and he keeps holding to it even as light gathers around the shape of the weapon in his hand and spreads out to envelop the whole of him. It rustles across his clothing and catches at the ends of his hair, as if the glow carries the force of a breeze with it; and then it’s settling in around him, illuminating the color of his coat and turning the shadows of his hair to white gold. The weapon in his hand shifts, gaining breadth and weight: the cuffs expand, growing wider by inches as the smaller, standard latch at the edges shifts into a heavier lock and the chain between them doubles in weight. Phoenix’s breath catches at this proof of Resonance, at actually seeing Miles act as the meister he has become; and then Miles takes a breath, and lets it out without opening his eyes, and the light begins to spread.

It’s hard to stay calm. Phoenix is trying, trying to cling to ease with all the desperate strength he can bring to bear; which he suspects is part of the problem, but he doesn’t know what else he can do. He feels more useless than otherwise, just hanging slack in Maya’s hold; but in the back of his mind Maya is all but bouncing in place, her whole awareness is leaning forward along with the balance of her body as she physically tips in towards the spread of that light expanding out towards them. There’s nothing but excitement in her head, nothing but the glow of anticipation clinging to the pattern of breathing she’s holding to with surprising focus; and Phoenix finds himself lost in that, caught up in the moment of Maya’s own enthusiasm until he forgets his own adrenaline. It’s like watching a child on Christmas morning, like seeing anticipation break open into the warm glow of delight as a gift is unwrapped and identified; and Phoenix is paying attention to that when the light finally touches them, and the force knocks him free entirely of his own concerns.

It’s overwhelming. He wasn’t expecting that; for all Miles’s warnings, Phoenix has had no sense of what to expect, has been able to gain no kind of logic for this experience from any of the ever-vague descriptions he’s heard in class or from other students.  _Exciting_ , some had said,  _immersive, like being remade_ ; but no one talked about the force with which it hits, no one had mentioned the feeling of someone else’s awareness rushing out and into his own. It’s like being wielded, like having someone else inside the space of his own head; but more complete, more intimate, like trying to swallow down the whole of an ocean wave instead of just ducking his head and letting it pass over him. Phoenix can feel himself giving way, can feel his psyche dissolving to the force; except it’s him, still, he’s still part of it,  _Nick_  and  _Mr. Wright_  and  _Phoenix_  all sweeping in to override and blend with the deep-down sense of  _me_  that Phoenix carries with him without even thinking about it, without even trying to draw out the lines between himself and the rest of the world. There’s the weight of a coat over his shoulders, the strange drag of long hair falling around his face, the cool of metal clutched tight in his fingers; and sadness, so much sadness, more misery than Phoenix ever thought could exist in the world, loneliness and grief and loss and isolation and  _want_ , a desperate, near-painful need for closeness, for companionship, for a connection strong enough to overwrite the past and unravel the pain of history and -- and everything fractures like glass, fragmenting away before Phoenix can take a breath, before he can identify the source of that unhappiness, before he can place the different pieces of that painful desire as Gumshoe’s, or Maya’s, or Miles’s, or his own. Maya gasps an inhale, her fingers tightening on the handle of Phoenix’s weapon form; and from the other side of the classroom Miles chokes on a breath, stumbling backwards as if he’s been shoved as the light around him and Gumshoe winks out at once.

There’s silence for a moment. Phoenix’s heart is racing, his breathing is catching even though he doesn’t have a body to fit it inside; he thinks his hands would be trembling, if he had hands at the present moment. Maya’s hold on him is certain, her grip unflinching; but there’s a unevenness to her breathing, a damp at her eyes that Phoenix only barely has time to notice before she’s lifting a hand to swipe her sleeve across her cheeks.

“Right,” Miles says, and his voice is rough, all trace of that politely professorial tone stripped away by the surge of emotion that must have hit him too, that thrum of resonance as their individual griefs tangled together into a single unbearable whole. “That was close.” He straightens his stance, ducking his head down as he sets his feet carefully against the floor; Phoenix tries not to notice the way the other lifts a hand to press over his face for a moment, or the way his inhale catches too loud in the space of the room. “Try again. Remember to stay calm, Wright.”

Phoenix lets himself go as slack as he can in obedience to Miles’s request; but as the light spreads itself back around Miles and Gumshoe before them, he can’t help but feel his breathing pick up, can’t help but shift in Maya’s hand to echo her own anticipatory lean forward.

It’s just instinctive. No one could feel loneliness like that without wanting to ease it however they can.


	15. Paired

“Alright.” Miles’s voice sounds very far away, distant and echoey from more than just the effect of Phoenix’s weapon form. “Are you two ready?”

 _We’re not the only ones who are going to be in this fight_ , Phoenix comments in the back of Maya’s head, letting his tone pick up sarcasm that he wouldn’t give voice to if he were speaking to more than the single person.  _Is he sure_ he’s _going to be alright?_

“Are  _you_  two ready?” Maya says aloud, echoing Phoenix’s words with none of the other’s consideration for their audience. “This is your first time back out since the hospital, isn’t it?”

Phoenix can almost feel Miles’s shoulders stiffen with offended pride, can all but feel the chill that rushes off the other as he lifts his chin to stare down at Maya. “I assure you, I am more than capable of fulfilling my duties as a meister. I don’t need concern from anyone, even a member of the Fey family.”

Maya lifts her hands up in front of her as she rocks back on her heels. “No need to get touchy, Phoenix was just worried about you.”

 _Maya_ , Phoenix groans, feeling the strong urge to smack his palm to his forehead at his partner’s unnecessary honesty.  _You weren’t supposed to_ tell _him!_

 _He’s never going to know otherwise_ , Maya informs him without missing a beat.  _It’s exhausting watching you two dance around each other all the time. Besides, he’ll know as soon as we start Resonating, he’s going to be in your head along with everyone else._

Phoenix gusts a sigh.  _Thanks for the reminder_ , he offers with as much deadpan sarcasm as he can muster.

 _Don’t mention it_ , Maya gives back with aggressive sincerity on her tone.  _You’re lucky to have me as a meister!_

It’s Miles’s sigh that brings Phoenix’s attention back to the other standing in front of them with Gumshoe in his transformed state in his hold. He has a hand up in front of his face, his fingers catching at the fall of his hair and his palm obscuring his expression; but he doesn’t sound nearly as irritated as Phoenix had expected him to, under the circumstances.

“It doesn’t matter,” Miles says, and then he’s turning away to stride down the street before Phoenix can get a good look at his face. “Let’s just go and finish the fight.”

 _Huh_ , Phoenix says into the surprised silence shared out between his own thoughts and Maya’s.  _He’s not mad_.

 _No_ , Maya agrees. She sounds thoughtful, like she’s turning some idea over in the back of her head.  _Maybe he’s getting more mature?_

 _Mm_ , Phoenix offers.

“Are you coming?” Miles calls without turning around. “Gumshoe and I will finish the fight ourselves if we need to.”

 _Nope_ , Maya and Phoenix say in perfect stereo; and then Maya tips forward and drops into an easy jog to catch up to Miles’s steady stride down the street.

They continue forward in silence for another few blocks. The city is quiet around them but for the occasion murmur of sound from an open window or the rustle of a breeze wandering down a narrow alley; Death City often is, especially in the middle of the week like it is tonight. It’s as if the residents go quiet to make it easier to find disturbances, to draw attention to those inhuman monsters that sometimes lurk in the shadows until a DWMA student can track them down and clear the streets of their influence. That’s what they’re after right now, too; one of the two-star enemies that would be a challenge for Maya and Phoenix but ought to be a simple matter for Gumshoe and Miles. The goal is to provide motivation enough for Group Resonance, and a situation for Maya and Phoenix to practice the feel of the action in a high-pressure situation; and if worst should come to worst, the other two can step in to deal with the enemy singlehandedly if needed to prevent any major injury to any of them. It’s a safe plan, careful and well-planned and logically structured; and still Phoenix’s skin is prickling with electricity, his whole self drawing tense with stress he can’t explain. He always gets this way before fights, he knows, it’s a kind of uncertain panic that grips him no matter how much he tries to tell himself he can handle this; by now he knows all he can do is take a deep breath, and let it out slow, and try to ease the rush of his breathing back from the edge of hyperventilation if he can manage nothing else. It doesn’t help, exactly; but it gives him something to focus on, something to hold his awareness to the present moment, and he’s lost in the rhythm of counting himself to calm when Maya stops walking, and says, “Did you hear that?” with her voice ringing clear against the walls of the buildings around them.

Miles stops as immediately as the rhythm of Phoenix’s breath does. “No,” he says, but he doesn’t sound judgmental, and he’s speaking far more softly than Maya. “What was it?”

Maya shakes her head. “I don’t know,” she says. Her hand tightens on the handle of Phoenix’s weapon form; Phoenix can feel the flex of her fingers against his wood. “I think--”

“Maya,” Miles says, his voice soft but thrumming with strain, his hand coming out to touch Maya’s shoulder and still her to quiet. Maya’s words cut off at once, her head turns to look up at Miles; but Phoenix’s attention is spreading out in front of them, pinning itself to the darkness collecting in the dim between two streetlights, because he’s seen what Miles has: a glimpse of red, flickering like a dying candleflame with the telltale proof of eyes staring back at them from the darkness.

“You’ve got this,” Miles says, speaking softly even as he keeps staring at the shadow. Maya has looked to follow his gaze too; Phoenix can feel the strain of the moment stretching out as if it’s a standoff, all of them waiting breathlessly for the other to make the first move. “Both of you. Take it slowly.”

“We’re fine,” Maya says, her voice still clear, with no attempt at all to match the soft murmur of Miles’s, and then she’s stepping forward, striding out into the main space of the street even as Miles hisses half-voiced protest behind her. Phoenix’s spine prickles with self-consciousness, with the beginnings of fear running adrenaline through the whole of his body; but Maya’s hold on him is unflinching, and when she speaks again it’s to him directly, without bothering with the silent communication they’ve been having. “Come on, Nick, let’s show them who’s boss.”

“Damn it,” Miles growls, his voice dragging rough over frustration as he starts to glow, his body illuminating with the light of Resonance as he tightens his hold on the handcuffs in his grip. It ought to be alarming, to have such irritable frustration so clear in response to Maya’s actions; but somehow it makes Phoenix’s chest go tight with startling amusement instead, makes his throat close up with a spill of laughter that breaks free into the space of he and Maya’s shared thoughts before he can stop it.

 _Yeah_ , he says, and lets his attention slide around to the shadow in front of them, the shape lifting and rising from its hiding place as it realizes it’s already been seen and that there’s no further point to hiding.  _I bet we can take it on before Miles can even get himself in order_.

 _That’s the spirit_ , Maya thinks, the words bright with excitement; and aloud: “Let’s go!” as she tips forward to drop into a run just as the glow of the Group Resonance reaches out to loop itself around them.

It’s easier this time. They’ve practiced this over and over in the classroom, repeating the action of falling into sync with each other until Phoenix doesn’t have to think to brace himself against the surge of emotion, until he can breathe past that first inevitable rush of grief without even thinking about it. There’s a catch, this time, an edge of friction as Miles’s frustration runs up against Maya’s stubborn determination; but neither of them is truly angry, Phoenix knows, Phoenix can taste the certainty of that like ozone in the air, and they’re both capitulating as fast as Maya’s feet hit the pavement, shifting to accommodate the demands of the other’s presence with no more than a huff of irritation and a breath of hesitation. Phoenix can almost feel the connection settle, would swear he can see the outline of the others’ soul wavelengths reaching out to his and Maya’s; and then the wave comes, and Phoenix lets himself sink under it, lets himself lose the air he never really needed to breathe in the first place.

It feels natural, in a way, even as his awareness of his self spreads out to encompass Maya, Miles, even Gumshoe, far in the distant reaches of the connection; it’s like this is the form Phoenix was always meant to take, as if there’s some part of his weapon’s soul that has always been craving a connection like this, that has always wanted the subsumption of himself into something bigger and steadier than he is alone. Maybe it’s a shared feeling, the thought comes as  _he_  becomes  _they_ ; because after all there’s three weapons between the four of them, the effect of three separate individuals on the greater whole they have become. Something twinges at that, some well-learned rejection of the self-identification of  _weapon_  from one of the entities; but there’s not enough individuality to override the effect of instinct, and within the span of a breath the rejection has eased into the dull ache of discomfort, the awareness of a fact even if they may not necessarily want it to be true. It doesn’t matter anyway, right now; they’re moving together in this moment, surging forward and towards the shadowy shape before them with a grip closed tight around them, with the weight of a heavy handle under their fingers, their senses bleeding together and melding until there are no edges, no distinctions, just a single spreading awareness raising the weight of a hammer in a two-handed grip and swinging it around and in to crack hard against the skull of the shadowy shape before them. It will sweep aside the darkness, they’re all sure, will tear through whatever uncertain substance the enemy is made of; and then they can retreat, and reform into themselves, and go home comfortable in the certainty of their own success.

Except the victory doesn’t come. The hammer swings, yes; but there’s no resistance, no substance to the shape in front of them. It parts like water, like the ocean swirling cool around wide-spread fingers; and someone gasps a breath, surprise ricocheting sharp through all the edges of their shared existence, and the connection snaps like a rubber band giving way to throw Phoenix violently back into his old form. He can feel the greater weight of the hammer he can become shatter around him like glass, scattering the connection to the others as it gives way with so much force that for a moment he can’t even hear Maya for the echoing in his head. Behind them Miles is hissing, is lunging forward and swinging the weight of the handcuffs in his grip towards the shape of the creature before them; but he doesn’t move fast enough, or maybe doesn’t realize in time that their Resonance is broken, because his swing is too short, shaped for a longer chain and a heavier weight, and when the handcuffs of Gumshoe’s weapon form swing around it’s for the metal to smack hard against Miles’s wrist and unclench the tension in his fingers with the reflexive force. The handcuffs go flying, skidding across the street with a clatter of metal on pavement, and the creature before them lurches forward to sweep over the dark of them and obscure them from sight as if they’re being absorbed.

“ _Shit_ ,” Miles hisses, the word harsh and grating past his teeth; but it’s Maya Phoenix hears, Maya’s wordless shout of rejection that echoes too-loud in his ears. Maya lunges forward, closing over the distance between herself and the shadow before them, and she’s lifting Phoenix’s weapon form without any apparent regard for the fact that Phoenix is the size of a fist instead of a real weapon, that without Resonance he’s spectacularly ill-suited for the frontal attack Maya is attempting. They have to come from the back, they need to circle around and gain the element of surprise, as they have in all their other fights up till now; but Maya isn’t hesitating as she draws back for another swing, and Phoenix is still too shaken to muster any kind of mental coherency around their too-recently fractured bond. The best he can manage is a yell, something vague and warning as Maya’s arm flexes and her whole body commits to the forward swing. Something crackles over Phoenix’s weapon form, a ticklish sensation dancing against the wood of his surface like it’s trying to gain traction; and then he’s sinking into darkness, all his senses going silent as he’s enveloped by the shape in front of them. The shadow thickens around him, fog turning into jelly as quickly as he moves, like fingers reaching out to grasp for him; but he’s moving too fast, or maybe it’s that tickling sensation still winding around him that keeps the thing from gaining a hold on him, because he’s coming out the other side before he can think to panic, reemerging into the relative illumination of the night with a sensation like he’s just broken the surface of some endless ocean.

“Oh,” Maya gasps, her voice sounding strangely loud in Phoenix’s suddenly-returned hearing. “What  _was_  that?”

 _Do it again_ , Phoenix urges, not sure if Maya can still hear him but offering communication in the only context he has, under the circumstances.  _I think it felt it that time_.

“I don’t know what I did,” Maya says, her voice skipping higher as her grip tightens on Phoenix’s handle. Her hands are shaking; Phoenix can feel the vibration running through his form. “I used to do that with…” and her voice breaks off,  _Mia_  coming so clearly to Phoenix’s mind that he doesn’t know if it’s his own thought or Maya’s coming through to him. “I don’t--”

“ _Maya!_ ”

It’s a shout of desperation, the emotion so clear on that one word that Phoenix reacts to the feeling before he’s identified the speaker, before he’s made sense of the straining effort on the words as coming from the tension of Miles’s throat. Maya stumbles, her head turns as she looks back towards the hand clutching to pull at the sleeve of her dress; and there’s a lash of shadow, cracking hard as a whip through the air to land heavily against her temple. Maya gasps a shocked breath at the impact, the reflexive response too immediate to be deliberate; and then the space of Phoenix’s head goes silent, as blank and empty as if a door has slammed in his face to cut him off from any direct connection. He jerks away from the contact, pulling free of the slack weight of Maya’s hold on him as rapidly as he can form himself back into the size and presence of his human form; but it’s Miles who catches Maya before she hits the ground, who has an arm under her shoulders as quickly as she collapses with the boneless force of unconsciousness from that startling blow.

“ _Maya_ ,” Phoenix gasps, almost before he has the lungs to give the word voice, as if his entire transformation is just so he can express the panic seizing itself around his heart with all the force of a fist. “ _No_ , Maya,  _Maya_.”

“She’s alive,” Miles says, the words all but cracking over the speed with which he’s pronouncing them; there’s no space for that usual lilting accent here, he’s biting off each word to a razor edge as fast as he lowers Maya carefully to the support of the street. “Change back.”

“ _What_ ,” Phoenix gasps. “She’s my  _meister_ , she needs  _help_ , what do you--”

“We are in the middle of a  _fight_ , Phoenix,” Miles snaps, and he’s shoving to his feet, bracing himself to his full height as he turns to look back towards the shadow of their enemy, the opponent Phoenix lost from his awareness for that first moment of panic. “I need you to  _transform_.” And he extends his hand without looking, palm turned up to make the whole of the gesture a suggestion, a command, a plea for the weight of a weapon to press against his hold.

Phoenix doesn’t hesitate. He should. It would make sense to have a moment of pause, to have even a heartbeat of time when he questions this idea, when he lets this unconsidered possibility unfold into the spaces of his mind in its full weight and import. But Miles’s words sink into him the same way his weapon form did, the way his first transformation felt like uncovering something he had always known was there and never had a name for, and in the heartbeat after Miles speaks Phoenix isn’t gaping, or reflecting, or hesitating at all. He’s transforming, flickering into the brilliant light of his shifting form and rearranging the pieces of himself into the gavel he becomes like this; and Miles is reaching too, with his soul as much as his hand, until Phoenix doesn’t know if it’s the glow of Resonance or the press of Miles’s grip that hits him first, until they seem to merge into a single entity as part of the same motion of a sure hand closing tight around a wooden handle.

Awareness spreads out, memories filter and catch on each other; and slot together like puzzle pieces, two perspectives on the same scene slotting into place as if they were meant to be there, like the view from two eyes coming together to grant a depth that wasn’t there before. There’s the weight of a weapon gaining size, expanding and settling into itself as if it is stretching out to occupy the space it was always meant to fill, and against the smooth wood of the handle two hands come around to close hard against the support, to expand the direct connection between the two parts of the whole they have become, the single existence bridging the barely-there gap between human and hammer without any need for conscious effort. There’s grief still, still that unmeasured depth of mourning deep down in their awareness; but it’s bearable, this time, something that can be acknowledged without eclipsing their functionality when it’s shared out between the greater resilience of their present existence, of the shared awareness they were meant to have, that makes such an emotional burden manageable instead of overwhelming. It’s a relief just to have that stability between them, to feel centered and sure in their existence as they never have before; and when they move forward it’s without any discussion at all, as smooth and fluid as acting on the impulse of a single mind to take a stride forward.

The monster hisses as they approach, skittering backwards across the dark pavement of the road and dropping back into itself to compact the vague outline of its presence into something thicker and heavy. It’s not surrender -- its preparation instead, like a fist tightening in expectation of a blow -- but it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t make a difference when they’re together without even the gap of a breath between one’s thought and the other’s. They move as one, striding forward with easy grace, and when the hammer part of them comes around it’s just as fluid, more the smooth upward arc of a thrown punch than something requiring the conscious effort of swinging a weapon. The weight of it is natural, a logical extension of who they are, of what they have become, and when the force impacts the creature before them it’s no surprise the shadow hisses back, crackling with protest at the illuminated glow of the blow that has just hit home. They take another step forward, and take another backhanded swing; and the monster keens, and collapses, and crumbles in on itself like it’s melting down into an oil spill across the pavement. There’s a moment of uncertainty, as the enemy quivers with instinctive protest to its own collapse and the flicker of its soul tangles with the malevolent glare of its crimson eyes; but then it gives way, surrendering to the collapse into defeat, and they take a breath together, and Miles is the one to let it out, as the light of Resonance around them fades back into the dimmer illumination of the moon overhead and the streetlamps a few feet away.

Phoenix transforms at once. He doesn’t need to be told, doesn’t need to wait for Miles to put words to their next steps; that was a point they were perfectly clear on in their briefly shared existence, and he’s no less certain of himself now. Miles’s hand eases on Phoenix’s handle, the certain strength of his grip loosens; and Phoenix slides away at once, pulling himself free of Miles’s hold and reforming himself into the human shape that he spends so much more of his time in. Miles turns to go back to where Maya fell, his actions as focused as Phoenix’s, and Phoenix takes a step forward to reach out and collect the handcuffs that make Gumshoe’s weapon form. He has a moment of panic as he reaches for the metal, a brief shudder of fear that they will stay still and silent even as his fingers touch the loop of the cuffs; but his skin has barely made contact before there’s a voice sliding into the back of his head,  _are you okay pal?_  with all the panicked force of concern under Gumshoe’s usual gruff tone.

 _We’re fine_ , Phoenix offers back, huffing a breath of relief as he lifts the handcuffs and straightens again.  _It’s over now_.

 _That’s a relief_ , Gumshoe sighs; and then, with his voice dropping into worry again:  _What about Miss Fey? Is she alright?_

 _I think so_ , Phoenix says, but he’s turning as quickly as he offers the statement, twisting to look back to where Miles is leaning over Phoenix’s meister.  _Miles said she…_  and then he sees what’s behind them, and his thoughts die to a sudden surge of panic.

It’s not Maya. Miles is on his knees next to her, fitting an arm under her shoulders to lift her back up off the pavement and towards a more upright position; and Maya’s frowning, and lifting a hand to press to the side of her head, there’s no question of her rapid return to consciousness. But Miles is looking at Maya, and not behind himself, which means that he doesn’t see the shadow sliding against the edge of the streetlight to creep around his back. Phoenix doesn’t know if it’s the last remnant of the enemy they defeated, some last gasp of resistance from a form more instinctive than otherwise; or maybe there were two in the first place, melded together until it was impossible to tell the second from the first. It doesn’t make a difference; what matters is that there’s a shadow forming itself at Miles’s back, and Miles is weaponless, and Phoenix doesn’t have time to think.

 _Mr. Edgeworth_ , Gumshoe shouts in Phoenix’s head, the sound loud as if it might carry through to audibility if he only yells loud enough; but “ _Miles!_ ” Phoenix is screaming, at a volume loud enough to drag his voice hoarse and aching even as he lunges forward over the few strides of distance between him and the others. He still has Gumshoe in his hand, still has his fingers clenched tight around the weight of the metal; but he doesn’t have any idea how to make use of the other weapon, doesn’t have any innate understanding of how to wield someone else’s weapon form in a fight. All he can do is draw his own hand back, balling his fingers into the fist that’s likely to be more effective right now than a partial transformation, and he’s swinging as quickly as the shadow shifts, sinking his full arm into the nebulous shape before him in a desperate attempt to stall out whatever attack might be coming to land on Miles. There’s a shift of the shadow around him, friction dragging slick over Phoenix’s skin; and it gains traction, this time, latching onto his wrist and dragging down to pull Phoenix off the balance of his feet. Phoenix stumbles, dropping Gumshoe from his hold as he opens his hand in an attempt to catch himself; and then there’s a surge of darkness, a rush of oncoming shadow, and he just hears the hiss of Miles gasping a breath before everything -- sound, sight, sensation -- cuts out to black.


	16. Resonant

Phoenix comes back to consciousness slowly.

It’s a difficult process, like waking up after too long spent asleep, like fighting to make his way to the surface of an ocean with limbs weighed down by the pressure of the liquid around them and the force of too many days’ worth of exhaustion. He keeps trying, reaching for coherency and clear thought with the most desperate energy his body can muster; and he keeps falling back to the darkness, slipping under the wave of dreams he doesn’t remember and minutes of memories he can’t make sense of. Eventually he breaks free again, even if only barely, even if only for a few seconds, and he begins the process all over again, holding to the murmur of voices and the distant glow of light on the other side of closed eyelids and hoping that this time, maybe, he’ll be able to make it to consciousness before he slides back under once more.

He doesn’t know how many times he tries. A handful, maybe, maybe a dozen, maybe more; he lacks the clarity of memory required to keep track of each attempt as he would need to to get a proper count. All he knows is it’s more than once, enough times that he’s half-resigned to his ultimate failure, that he’s more curious in how far he can make it than actually expecting to succeed; and, of course, the force of irony choses that moment to take effect, and he opens his eyes to the painful white of a hospital room.

He groans, first of all. That seems the thing to do, with the light filling the room stabbing such aching hurt into his skull; he flinches back from it as soon as it hits, reversing the hard-won victory of opening his eyes with reflexive speed. The light eases, the pain softens; but he stays coherent, this time, he doesn’t slip back into unconsciousness with the lowering of his lids. There’s a far-off sound, murmurs or rustling at some great distance but getting closer; and then they snap into place, incoherence becomes intelligibility, and “Nick?” comes a familiar voice pulled taut on sudden adrenaline. “Hey, Nick, can you hear me?” A hand closes at Phoenix’s shoulders, fingers press cloth hard against his skin. “Nick!”

“Yeah,” Phoenix says, hearing his voice grate in the back of his throat as he tries to find some measure of speech again. “I hear you, Maya.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Maya breathes, and the grip at Phoenix’s shoulder eases, loosening into a slack weight instead of a bruise-tight hold. There’s a huff of air and the sound of someone dropping heavily into a chair. “Oh,  _Nick_.”

Phoenix makes another attempt at opening his eyes. He’s more careful about the motion this time, more hesitant in meeting the glow of illumination overhead; it still hurts for the first moment, but he squints against the pain and his eyes start to adjust, capitulating to the clear white of the light overhead and picking out some of the details of his surroundings. There’s not much to see -- a tidy bed supporting him in a half-sitting position, a half-drawn curtain, the sterilely boring paraphernalia of a hospital room -- but it’s still satisfying just to see anything at all besides the shadowy half-memories of his own mind. He blinks slowly, letting the surroundings orient him in the present space of his reality; and then he turns his head to Maya, sitting alongside the bed and with her eyes wide and liquid with relieved tears.

“Hey,” he says. His voice sounds a little bit better now as he wears off the rust of disuse with easy syllables; he tries a smile, tries lifting a hand to bump his knuckles against Maya’s arm. “Good to see you.”

Maya ducks her head into an aggressive nod. “Yeah,” she says, and lifts her arm to rub against the wet in her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re awake.”

Phoenix blinks again. It’s hard to pull together the fragments of his memory -- he feels like every thought in his head is moving with near-painful slowness -- but he reaches for them anyway, pulling them into alignment and fitting the edges one against the other so he can see where the true gap of recollection begins. “What happened?”

Maya lets her hand drop from her face and takes a breath, visibly steadying herself back into some measure of composure. “A whole lot,” she says, which isn’t hugely helpful but is at least intensely evocative. “I only heard about it after I came to, after the other two finished off the enemy.”

“Oh,” Phoenix breathes, as that particular detail comes into sudden clarity in his thoughts. “Right. God, Maya, are you okay?”

Maya shakes her head to push aside this particular surge of concern. “I’m fine,” she says, and lifts a hand to touch against the square of white taped against her temple. “I was barely down for any time at all, I think I was coming to before the fight was even over. Edgeworth and Gumshoe finished things up while you were out; but Gumshoe said that was just the second enemy that they fought, that you and Edgeworth were actually working together when you took out the first.”

Phoenix frowns against the ache of effort in his head as his memories struggle to right themselves, as he lifts a hand to press his fingertips against the pounding hurt in his temples; but he ducks his head into a nod, agreeing to the basic details of the story even as he’s grimacing against the pain of trying to keep up with Maya’s speech. “Yeah, we got rid of the first while you and Gumshoe were out of commission.”

“You worked with Edgeworth?” Maya asks, her voice jumping up into a range of excitement Phoenix is patently unqualified to handle at this exact moment. She’s surging to her feet alongside the bed, leaning in over Phoenix while her hand tightens at his shoulder; her eyes are wide as she stares down at him. “Really? What was it like? Were you able to Resonate together?”

“What?” Phoenix says, caught more than a little off-guard by the force of Maya’s demands. “I don’t know. Yes, we Resonated, that’s how we--”

“Oh my gosh,” Maya says, and lets Phoenix’s shoulder go so she can clasp her hands in front of her instead. Her eyes are sparkling, her smile is expansive. “So you’re not fighting anymore!”

“Huh?” Phoenix blinks, wondering if it’s his lingering headache that is making it so hard to parse Maya’s words or if what she’s saying really is that unintelligible. “We weren’t  _fighting_ , we’ve never been fighting.”

Maya sweeps her hand through the air in a dismissive gesture. “You’ve made up, then.”

Phoenix frowns. “You’re saying the same thing.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Maya tells him. “I’m just glad you’re talking again. You know he--”

There’s the sound of a door coming open, the rattle of hinges shifting to let a weight swing in on a pivot point. “I don’t understand him,” a voice comes, low with a weight like that of the coat surely resting across the speaker’s shoulders. “He stays in the hallway all day but he won’t come inside, it doesn’t make any sense.” Gumshoe rounds the corner of the curtain, his hand up to scratch at the back of his neck and his head turned to frown back at the door swinging shut behind him. “He doesn’t even look like he’s slept, if he’s so worried he could just--” and then he turns to look to Maya, and his gaze jumps to Phoenix’s face, and his words cut off in a rush of obvious self-consciousness. “ _Oh_. You’re awake.”

“He just came to,” Maya informs Gumshoe with all her usual cheer warm on her voice. “Is he still in the hallway?”

Gumshoe’s hand falls from the back of his neck as he ducks his head into a nod. “Yeah. Still on the same bench where he has been this whole time.”

“He should come in,” Maya says decisively, and gets to her feet without so much as glancing back at Phoenix. “I’ll go get him.”

“I don’t think he’ll come,” Gumshoe says, but Maya is moving without waiting for his approval, ducking past the angle of his shoulder and around the fall of the curtain to disappear from sight. Gumshoe is left to frown after her, his forehead creased on concern to match the weight at the corners of his mouth before he huffs an exhale, and shakes his head, and looks back to Phoenix lying in the hospital bed. “Good to see you awake, pal.”

“Good to be awake,” Phoenix says. “Are you okay?”

Gumshoe shrugs. “Nothing wrong with me a little rest didn’t fix.” His gaze slides away from Phoenix again, back towards the fall of the curtain blocking their view of the doorway Maya disappeared through. “We could all do with a little rest, after that.”

Phoenix’s heart is pounding. Gumshoe could be talking about Maya as much as himself, that sideways glance could be for Phoenix’s meister and not his own; but Phoenix knows, knows with a certainty that remains utterly unruffled by the haze tangling around his thoughts or the aching distraction of his headache. He almost doesn’t want to ask, almost isn’t sure he can take the direct acknowledgment of the fourth member of their group; but he can’t  _not_  ask, not when the other’s name is tight in his throat and straining for freedom from his lips. “Miles?”

Gumshoe heaves a sigh without looking back to meet Phoenix’s gaze. “You got it, pal. He’s been on the bench outside your hospital room ever since they brought you in here. Dunno why -- he won’t come in to see you, even when we ask him -- but he hasn’t left either. I don’t think he’s really gotten any rest for the last day.”

Phoenix shouldn’t feel the surge of happiness he does. He knows that. He ought to feel concern, probably, some sympathetic worry on Miles’s behalf or some measure of guilt for so worrying the other. But in the first rush of epiphany it’s happiness that wins out over objective rationality, that sweeps aside what he  _should_  feel with what he  _does_ , and in the end Phoenix has to duck his head to stare down at his hands while he tries to figure out what he’s feeling, while he tries to undo the sudden pressure in his chest into something more than immediate, gratified affection. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Gumshoe heaves a sigh again. “Figured you should know, since I don’t think he’ll be coming in here himself now that you’re awake. Probably wouldn’t be too happy about me telling you he was waiting around for you, even.”

Phoenix snorts. “He probably planned to leave before I ever knew he was here,” he says, but even those words go soft on his tongue, they unfold into affection too warm and immediate for him to hold back. He ducks his head farther forward and curls his fingers in against each other to clasp his hands tight together. “That would be like him.”

“Probably,” Gumshoe agrees; and then, with a gusting exhale like he’s bracing himself: “Listen, can I ask you something?”

Phoenix lifts his head to meet the direct force of the other’s gaze, blinking up at Gumshoe gazing down at him. “Oh. Sure, yeah.”

“You and Mr. Edgeworth,” Gumshoe says, and then he looks away, frowning while he reaches for the back of his neck again. “Are you two--”

“Come  _on_ ,” comes Maya’s voice, loud enough that Phoenix can hear it even past the barrier of the shut door; and then the door squeaks open, and Phoenix and Gumshoe both are turning towards the sound as fast as they hear it. “You can’t wait all this time and then just  _leave_.”

“I can and I will,” comes another voice, heavy vowels and soft consonants, and Phoenix’s blood goes hot in his veins before he’s so much as seen Miles’s face. “Release me, you can’t make me come with you.”

“I can and I will,” Maya says, drawling the words into an unsubtle imitation of Miles’s accent. “He’s  _waiting_  for you, are you just going to run away again?”

“I never  _ran away_ ,” Miles says, his voice taking on an edge of heat as he pushes back against Maya’s claim. “I simply intend to--” and then there’s a huff of sound from Maya, a sharp inhale of breath from Miles, and they both more topple into view than walk. Miles is hissing protest at whatever Maya did -- jerked him roughly forward to pull him around the corner of the curtain, Phoenix thinks -- and for the first moment he’s turning to glare at her instead of looking at Phoenix, huffing incoherent outrage at this treatment of his self. But Maya is looking at Phoenix, her gaze certain and expression steady, and their eyes only meet for a moment before Phoenix is looking up, and Miles is looking back, and their eyes lock over the distance between them.

There’s a lot worth noticing about Miles in the moment. How wrinkled his shirt is, for one thing, with the weight of his usual suit jacket lost or removed sometime in the hours of waiting Gumshoe mentioned. The mess his hair has become around his face, until the silver looks more like a halo than the strictly smoothed curtain it usually is. How shadowed his eyes are, how dark the color underneath them has grown to prove how little badly-needed rest he’s actually let himself indulge in. But in the first heartbeat of time all Phoenix really sees is Miles’s eyes going wide, and Miles’s lips parting on a sudden exhale, and the whole of the other’s expression falling into the soft weight of relief as he sees Phoenix looking back at him from the hospital bed.

They stare at each other for a long span of seconds. Phoenix has no idea what expression he’s wearing, can hardly think about himself at all; it’s enough to have Miles standing there in front of him, gazing at him like he’s the only thing that still remains in the world, as if he  _is_  the whole of the world given life and breath by some miracle the other doesn’t yet understand. There’s some tension behind Miles’s eyes, something that might be laughter and might be tears and might be something completely unexpected, completely unplanned-for; and finally Phoenix takes a breath, and hears it catch in his throat, and huffs a breathless laugh as a smile pulls hard at the corner of his mouth.

“Hey Miles,” he says, and lifts a hand to offer a wave without looking away from the other’s face. “Good to see you again.”

Miles’s forehead creases, his mouth tightens; for a moment Phoenix is certain he really is about to cry, wonders distantly what he ought to do if Miles dissolves into tears at the side of his hospital bed. But then Miles ducks his head, and takes a breath Phoenix can hear catch with effort, and when he speaks the words are clear, even if his voice is straining over the effort to keep them that way.

“My god, Phoenix,” Miles says. “Don’t  _ever_ scare me like that again.”

Phoenix can’t make out the details of Miles’s expression, but he doesn’t need to. He can feel the weight of the other’s emotion as clearly as if their hearts are still in resonance with each other.


	17. Stabilize

Miles doesn’t leave again. Phoenix half-expected him to; it seems in keeping with the other’s intent avoidance of anything even vaguely approaching friendship since their reunion, and Phoenix anticipates Miles will want nothing so much as to retreat to the seclusion of privacy as rapidly as possible after seeing him again. But he misjudges Miles’s character in this, or maybe that same emotion that is keeping Miles’s head ducked down keeps him from leaving too, because what ends up happening is Miles laying claim to a seat in the corner of the space alongside Phoenix’s bed, and ducking his head in over his clasped hands, and if he doesn’t say anything after that first breathless gasp of relief he doesn’t look like he has the least intention of leaving, either. It’s a comfort just to have him there, Phoenix feels, reassuring to be able to turn his head and see Miles right there, within reach if Phoenix wanted to push up away from the support of the pillows behind him and stretch out, and just because he doesn’t doesn’t mean he doesn’t think of it.

“So,” Maya is saying now, apparently intent on resuming the flow of the conversation they had been in the midst of before she went to bodily pull Miles into the same space as Phoenix. She claps her hands together with a force that makes Phoenix flinch from the sound, but when she turns her head it’s to look up at Gumshoe alongside her rather than meeting Phoenix’s gaze. “Did you tell him yet?”

“Ah,” Gumshoe says, and ducks his head as if with embarrassment, tipping his shoulders forward protectively as he lifts a hand to scratch at the back of his neck again. “Not yet.”

Maya huffs and lets her hands drop to set on her hips instead. “You said you would pitch the idea to him if I gave you a minute alone!”

“I tried,” Gumshoe says. “I was gonna bring it up but then he asked about Mr. Edgeworth, and you came back before I had a chance.”

Maya rolls her eyes. “Is it  _that_  hard to ask a question?”

“It’s a delicate subject!” Gumshoe protests, letting his hand fall from the back of his neck as he shifts to face Maya fully. “I didn’t want to just throw it at him when he’s only just come to. It didn’t seem right.”

Phoenix glances sideways at Miles, in case the other has the faintest understanding of the topic at hand; but Miles is staring at the other two, his forehead creased on confusion and mouth drawing down on a lack of comprehension so clear Phoenix doesn’t have to ask for confirmation that Miles is as adrift in this as he is. Phoenix looks back to the other two, now fully turned in towards each other and apparently entirely forgetting that he and Miles still exist in the room, and clears his throat as deliberately as he can. “Hey.”

“It’s not  _that_  sensitive,” Maya informs Gumshoe, apparently not hearing Phoenix’s attempt at interruption. “They must have been thinking about it themselves, unless they’re idiots. Do you think  _your_ partner is an idiot?”

“ _What_ ,” Gumshoe gasps, and glances sideways at Miles as if he’s bracing himself for a blow. “ _No_ , of course I don’t.”

“Hey,” Phoenix says again, a little louder. “You two.”

“Good,” Maya says. “I don’t think Nick is either. So maybe we should--”

“ _Excuse me_ ,” Phoenix snaps, and finally Maya looks away from Gumshoe, her head turning so she can blink wide-eyed at Phoenix’s frustrated scowl. “Could  _one_  of you fill me in on the subject instead of talking over my head?”

“Yes,” Miles says, his agreement coming so fast Phoenix is startled into turning his head to see the way the other is leaning forward over his knees to frown at the other pair. “I would like to second that sentiment.”

Gumshoe grimaces and starts to lift his hand to the back of his neck. “Ah, well, we--”

“ _Gumshoe_ ,” Miles snaps, his voice cracking over the name until it’s a blow all on its own. “Are you keeping  _secrets_  from me?”

“No!” Gumshoe protests, lifting his hands in front of him to sweep aside this claim. “No sir, absolutely not, I’m just--”

“Maya,” Phoenix cuts in, speaking over Gumshoe’s desperate protests because he suspects this will continue for some time, and he’s more interested in getting an answer than in watching Gumshoe grovel. “ _What_?”

Maya glances at Gumshoe, still caught up in babbling offerings of protest for Miles’s fixed glare; and then she heaves a sigh, and looks back to Phoenix as her shoulders relax into decision certain enough that Phoenix can breathe a sigh of relief even before he’s heard whatever it is Maya is going to tell them.

“We were talking,” she says, lifting a hand to gesture between herself and Gumshoe, now so flustered he looks in some danger of dropping to his knees to beg for forgiveness. “And we think we should switch partners.”

The chill that runs down Phoenix’s spine is involuntary, a reflexive shudder of horror too well-learned from years alone, from months of passing from hand to hand without ever finding anyone willing to put up with his frustratingly ineffective weapon form. His lungs flex to empty themselves in a gasp, his throat tightens on a surge of hurt; it’s like he’s been forcibly thrown backwards in time by Maya’s words and aged down and out of his well-learned defenses, as if the blow of that one statement is enough to crack through all the fragility of his facade of maturity. “What?”

Maya frowns at him. “Don’t look like that,” she says, and steps forward right past Gumshoe’s blustering apologies to shove at Phoenix’s shoulder. “I’m not abandoning you. If you want to stay my partner I’d be happy to be your meister, but I thought you might like this better.”

“What?” Phoenix repeats, blinking up at Maya’s frowning stare and trying to get traction on what they’re talking about. Maybe it would be easier if he weren’t still dizzy from his injuries, or if he weren’t so blindsided by that emotion crushing reflexive hurt into his chest; but as it is he feels lost, like Maya’s telling him he’s standing on dry land when all he can feel is the panic of a drowning man. “I don’t understand.”

Maya heaves a sigh that says she’s being very patient, very  _deliberately_  patient, and that perhaps she ought to be offered a medal for her effort in walking Phoenix through this conversation to the obvious conclusion. “I didn’t say  _leaving_  partners,” she says, and then she turns her head to look across the span of Phoenix’s hospital bed. “I said  _switching_  partners.”

Phoenix stares at Maya for a moment, his thoughts still spinning too wildly to allow him the space to make sense of what sounds like reasonable enough words, if he could work himself around to understanding their import. Finally he turns his head to follow the force of her attention, to track it over the span of his bed and across to what she’s looking at instead of him. There’s the window set against the wall, the sunlight spilling through the drawn-open blinds to warm the white of the sheets over Phoenix’s legs; and there’s Miles, illuminated by the glow of the light and with his eyes wide with understanding, and Phoenix’s panic-delayed thoughts finally stumble themselves into comprehension as he sucks in a sharp inhale of air. “ _Oh_.”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” Maya says from Phoenix’s side. “They always say weapons do better with people they’ve known a while, and you’ve known each other since you were kids. Now that he’s a meister you can work together without any problems. Gumshoe and I were going to say something soon anyway, but then you actually fought together and it seemed like it was time to mention it.” Her hand tightens at Phoenix’s shoulder for a minute, but Phoenix can’t look away from Miles on the other side of the bed, even though Miles is staring at Maya with a focus that Phoenix suspects is more to avoid meeting Phoenix’s gaze than out of actual attention for the person in front of him. “I’ll stay your meister if you want, and Gumshoe is happy to keep working with Edgeworth. But we wanted to give you the choice, anyway.”

The room goes very silent. Phoenix feels like he can’t find breath for any kind of a response, as if his own voice is tied inextricably to Miles’s; and Miles isn’t speaking, Phoenix isn’t actually sure Miles is breathing for how intently he’s staring up at Maya on the other side of the bed. The moment hesitates on tension, pulls long and straining around the adrenaline Phoenix can feel coursing through him; and then Maya eases her hold, and pats hard against Phoenix’s shoulder.

“So!” she says, her voice bright with the kind of cheer Phoenix has learned to consider an unequivocal sign of danger. He looks up at once, his attention dragged around by sheer self-preservation, but Maya is already turning away and reaching for Gumshoe’s arm to grab at the other and steer him forcibly towards the edge of the curtain. “We’ll leave you two to talk it over and be back later. Take your time, we’re in no rush!”

“Wait,” Phoenix says. “Maya--”

“Bye!” Maya says in a clear, carrying tone; and then, much more softly: “Quick, let’s go!” to Gumshoe beside her. There’s the scuff of a shoe against the floor, a huff as of reaction to a fist shoving hard against someone’s ribs; and then the other two are gone, and Phoenix hears the door swing shut behind them, and he and Miles are left alone.

Phoenix looks back first. Miles is still staring in the direction of the door, his eyes wide and expression utterly, deliberately blank of any nameable expression; Phoenix wonders vaguely if he’ll just keep looking after the other two if Phoenix stays quiet and lets him linger in whatever shocked silence he has found for himself. But curiosity isn’t enough to override Phoenix’s own sense of self-consciousness, and he thinks he might actually want to have this conversation; so he clears his throat, and shifts against the pillows behind him, and tries on a smile to meet Miles’s gaze as the other blinks and looks back at him.

“Well,” Phoenix says, in the closest thing to a normal tone he can manage when his heart is racing in his chest. “Partners, huh?”

Phoenix can see Miles’s jaw set on tension, can see the press of the other’s lips pin close against each other. He flinches and opens his mouth to offer some kind of an apology, even though he’s not sure what he would be apologizing for; and then Miles’s cheeks darken, his whole face shades into a sudden, brilliant flush, and Phoenix loses his breath with shock even before Miles has ducked his head down over his hands in an attempt to hide the color suffusing his face in the shadow of his hair. Phoenix blinks, feeling like gravity has just dropped out from under him to see such absolute embarrassment so radiantly clear across Miles’s face; and then Miles clears his throat with rough force, and Phoenix forgets about the other’s self-consciousness in favor of hanging on whatever it is Miles is going to give him by way of speech.

“I didn’t intend--” Miles begins, stammering over the words with an uncertainty Phoenix can’t remember ever hearing from him before, can’t recall ever seeing in any part of the smooth polish Miles usually maintains on his persona. He closes his mouth and lifts a hand to push through his hair; the gesture does nothing to smooth the strands, due probably to the fact that Miles’s hand is shaking so badly Phoenix can see the tremor of it even from where he’s sitting. When Miles huffs an exhale Phoenix can hear the sound tremble against the back of his throat. “I didn’t know they intended that.”

Phoenix blinks. “What?” he starts, just to make his confusion clear; and then he laughs, the sound sudden and uncontrolled. “Oh. Yeah, I can tell.” Miles glances up at him, his mouth pulling on a frown of confusion, and Phoenix leans back against the pillows behind him and lets the threat of a grin tug up at the corner of his lips. “You should see your face, there’s no  _way_  you’re a good enough actor to look so embarrassed without actually feeling it.”

“I am  _not_ \--” Miles snaps, apparently too caught up in habit to avoid this kneejerk reaction; and then he closes his mouth hard, his face coloring in a renewed wash of red as Phoenix grins at him. When he ducks his head it looks like surrender, like he’s trying to retreat from the casual battle of eye contact they’re having. “You’re no better.”

Phoenix brings his shoulder up to a shrug. “I didn’t say I was,” he says, because it’s charming to see Miles’s composure so entirely fail him but he’s not sadistic enough to push the point when the other’s discomfort is printed clear in every shift of his body. He turns his head to look away, to fix his gaze deliberately on the white of the curtain instead of on Miles so he can give the other a moment to at least try to collect himself, and when he takes a breath he coughs with excessive force to clear his throat of some of the nervous tension he can feel prickling all along his spine. “It sounds like our partners have sorted things out for us quite neatly.”

“Yes,” Miles says. There’s an edge on his voice; frustration makes him sound more like himself, makes Phoenix’s mouth tug against the curve of that smile again. “I’ll be having a word with Gumshoe about that.”

Phoenix takes a breath. His heart is fluttering in his chest, he can feel the dizzy rush of it like his adrenaline is trying to shove him back down to unconsciousness as a better option than pushing through the stress of this particular conversation; but he’s still taking full breaths, he hasn’t started hyperventilating yet, and however much the tremor in his hands might want him to stop  _he_  wants to face this immediately, he’s not sure he can stand to leave these words unstated. He catches the weight of the sheets under him in his hands, tightens his fingers to fists against the fabric; and then he lets his breath out of him in a rush, and speaks quickly, before he can overthink the words. “I’d like to be your partner.”

Miles falls absolutely silent. Phoenix would think the other had simply ceased to exist, if he believed it to be in any way possible; there’s no sound of breathing, no rustle of motion. It’s like Miles has made a statue of himself, like he’s shifted himself into the metal of the weapon form Phoenix knows is still within him, even if it goes unexpressed.

Phoenix keeps staring at the curtain, keeps talking with careful clarity. “We know we work well together now. We used to be partners, before, but with you as a meister we can team up just the two of us if you--” He breaks himself off, pauses to collect his thoughts. “I want to work with you again.” A breath, a span of silence. “I’ve never found a partner as well-suited to me as you and Larry were.” Phoenix’s heart is racing the faster with every word he speaks; he really does feel dizzy, now, he’s not sure how long he can keep himself together. He struggles through another inhale, telling himself  _this is it, this is the last one, you can stop talking after this_.

“I want you to be my meister,” Phoenix says, and then he turns his head, because he can’t stand to keep staring at the curtain without knowing how Miles looks, without being able to get a read on the other’s expression and gauge his reaction from that.

Miles is staring at him. His fingers are clasped together in his lap, his hands gripping each other so tightly they look like they’re trembling with the force; the position makes him look a little like a supplicant, like he’s about to drop to his knees and beg Phoenix for a favor. But his expression...his eyes are wide, his mouth is soft. The color in his cheeks has faded, scarlet dimming to a faint flush that looks more like happiness than the painful embarrassment that was there before. He looks young, startled back into innocence that Phoenix can never remember seeing in his face, as if he’s suddenly taken on the trappings of a childhood Phoenix isn’t sure he ever knew. They stare at each other for a moment, caught in their shared attention; and then Miles ducks his head, and takes a breath, and Phoenix can hear it tremble in the back of his throat.

“Damn it, Wright,” he says, and his hands tighten against each other, his fingers flex to press hard against the backs of his hands. “You haven’t changed at all.”

Phoenix unfolds his grip from the sheets next to him, loosening his hand from his hold so he can lean sideways and reach out towards Miles sitting a few feet away. Miles’s head turns, his gaze catches on Phoenix’s outstretched hand; and then he looks back down, hiding his face in shadow as he unclasps his hands and reaches out without looking to close his hold hard around Phoenix’s fingers.

It’s surprising, Phoenix reflects, how stable Miles’s hold on him is even when he hasn’t transformed at all.


	18. Reconnect

_Are you sure we’re ready for this?_  Phoenix asks, all but whispering the words inside his head even though he doesn’t need to, even though he could speak as loud as he likes and still not interrupt the eerie silence so filling the space of the trees looming around them.  _This is a pretty big opponent for us to take on for our first field mission._

 _I’m sure_ , Miles thinks back at him, without so much as a flicker of reaction across his face. It’s an impressive demonstration of self-control, Phoenix thinks, however uncanny it is to be aware of the other’s stoic expression and the fleeting impression of an eyeroll at one and the same moment.  _You still underestimate yourself the way you used to, Wright_. There’s the briefest hesitation over the name, a moment when Phoenix thinks it might slip sideways into the softer syllables of his first name instead of his last; but Miles holds to his habit in this case instead of falling back to reflex, and Phoenix tries to repress his responding sigh as best he can and change the subject before Miles notices the weight of resignation on his thoughts.

 _It’s nice to work together like this_ , he offers, reaching for a measure of cheer on his tone to overcome his discomfort with the current setting and what vague anxieties are stirring underneath the adrenaline of expected combat running so hot through him.  _It reminds me of when we were in the NOT class together with Larry._

 _Is that a particularly pleasant memory for you?_  Miles asks in a tone that makes it abundantly clear the question is meant to be rhetorical rather than sincere.  _We were all failing to live up to our potential over those months._

Phoenix sets himself, feeling a little like he’s clenching a jaw he doesn’t have in his present form.  _It was a good time_ , he says, pushing back against the offhand disdain in Miles’s tone with all the force of sincerity he can find.  _I liked working with the two of you._

 _We weren’t_ working _together_ , Miles tells him.  _We were_ playing _._

 _We were kids,_ Phoenix fires back.  _We were_ friends _. We had fun_.

There’s a pause, a moment of silence so absolute Phoenix is absolutely certain Miles is deliberately fighting back some train of thought just so Phoenix won’t hear it. When he speaks again his voice is a little more distant, a little calmer, like he’s backed away in an attempt to regain composure via distance.  _We were weapons. We didn’t have time to have fun._

Phoenix heaves a sigh, deliberately loud so he’s sure Miles will hear it.  _You really have no idea how to let yourself relax, do you?_

He can feel Miles’s shoulders tense, can feel the other’s posture going taut in reflexive rejection of the implication of this statement.  _I am_ perfectly _effective in my work, I don’t see what relaxation has to do with that._

 _I’m not talking about your work,_  Phoenix tells him.  _I’m talking about you. Are_ you _having a good time doing what you’re doing?_  Another pause, a breath just long enough for Miles to take in the words, and Phoenix goes on.  _You really do need a weapon partner who can look after you._

It’s a little bit funny to hear the outrage on Miles’s hissing inhale.  _I do_ not-- he begins, even his inner monologue going shrill with frustration; and then there’s a  _crack_  from ahead of them, the sound of a branch giving way beneath the press of something’s weight, and Miles is dropping the subject as rapidly as Phoenix’s attention is skidding away from the sound of the other’s voice in his head to the shadowy shapes arrayed around him instead. There seems to be an infinity of them for a moment, a weight and a presence to the branches looming overhead that he can feel with all the rising panic of a small animal trapped in the gaze of some unseen but clearly sensed predator; and then Miles takes a breath, and tightens his grip, and Phoenix comes back into himself in a rush of relief. He’s not a small, terrified creature, he’s not a helpless child afraid of the weight of the dark; he’s a weapon, solid and sure in the smooth lines of his weapon form, with his meister’s grip bracing tight against his handle and his meister’s shoes steady on the ground, and together they are a force to be reckoned with.

 _Calm down_ , Miles thinks, offering the words in a perfectly level tone to Phoenix’s thoughts that manages to convey the force of a hand pressing to the other’s shoulder, of fingers tightening to comfort against Phoenix’s arm.  _We’re okay_. Phoenix starts to tell Miles that he’s okay, that he’s fine, that he didn’t need the reassurance; and then he feels the way Miles’s hand is tensing against him, feels the weight of the other’s fingertips digging in hard against his handle like Miles is trying to gain traction against the smooth-polished wood, and he cuts off his thought before he can get out more than the first exhale.

 _I know_ , he says instead.  _I’m counting on you_. It’s not something he would find reassuring in Miles’s place; he thinks the thought would make his own stress spike the higher, knowing that someone else was relying on his strength so directly. But Miles’s shoulders ease, his breath rushes out of him in an audible exhale, and Phoenix can feel the edge of panic retreat from the other’s thoughts at the same time the grip on his handle relaxes. It’s remarkable, how much difference the statement makes; and Phoenix wonders for the first time if Miles made the right decision after all, if maybe he really  _is_  better suited to taking on the responsibility of a meister’s role instead of the support of a weapon’s.

 _Let’s go_ , Miles tells Phoenix, cutting off the trajectory of the other’s personal reflection before it has time to form, and Phoenix lets his focus shift, lets it swing around and back out to fall into alignment with Miles’s own attention. The forest is dark around them, the trees looming high overhead rustling in the wind to tug and drag at Phoenix’s attention; but Miles isn’t looking at them, isn’t sparing so much as a glance for their surroundings, and it’s easy for Phoenix to follow the other’s attention when it’s so focused. In front of them, between the outline of two trees, there’s a third, smaller and stunted and lacking any of the leaves that are so dappling the moonlight around them with shadow; and then it moves, the action too graceful to be the minimal motion brought about by the force of the winds tugging at wide-spread branches, and Phoenix sucks in a breath at the exact same moment Miles lets one go.

 _Now_  Miles thinks, that one word steady and calm like it’s been stripped of any of the emotion that might reasonably appear at this situation; but Phoenix doesn’t need the command, isn’t waiting for the signal to reach out. He’s there already, stretching out across the gap between his thoughts and Miles’s like he’s extending a hand, like he’s offering his palm for the other to take; and this time Miles takes it immediately, with no trace of the uncomfortable distance that is still so coloring their in-person interactions. This is instant, instinctive, a next step as certain as the one Miles takes forward as he brings his other hand around to Phoenix’s handle; and then their thoughts touch, Miles’s illusory hand shifts to intertwine his fingers with Phoenix’s, and the lines between them blur and vanish as quickly as that, the boundary between one mind and the next giving way as if it’s fog burning off before the glow of a morning sun. There’s a weight of emotion that hits Phoenix, pain and uncertainty and loneliness so familiar he can almost recognize it as his own; and he lets it hit him, lets it latch onto him, and as his sense of  _me_  melts into  _we_  he can feel the strain of that cold isolation ease, can feel the pressure unwind enough to let them take a long breath as if they’ve never really breathed before. It feels right, like this, the weight of their weapon and the grip of their hands and the taste of the air on their tongue and filling their lungs; and when they move it’s without discussion, with no more dialogue needed than what flicker-fast communication there is between thoughts in a single person’s head. Their foot comes down hard against the leaves beneath them, planting itself solidly in place to prevent slipping as they swing their body around and into a blow as smooth as if it’s the same movement, as if they’re dancing with all the grace of pure creativity. They barely even hesitate as their weapon cracks hard against the resistance of the shadow in front of them, as the blow recoils from the Kishin egg’s head and sends the monster skidding sideways with a low hiss of pain and protest at once; their next motion is decided before the first is completed, their body already shifting forward to take another long stride forward. The shadow shifts, swinging itself in closer in an attempt to dodge their next swing; but they make it anyway, rocking their weight back with an athleticism this body doesn’t usually have to bring around the weight of the hammer glowing in their hands with light enough to eclipse the illumination of the moon.

 _Almost there_ , they think, their voice echoing back on itself with the weight of two tones at once, two different pitches blending and merging until the thought sounds almost like a song, feels almost like a poem.  _One more will do it._  The weapon part of them is glowing brilliantly, the light within it surging brighter with every second that passes; the trees around them are being blown out into glowing illumination, their rough trunks set in stark relief by the bright. Before them the Kishin egg hisses again, baring shadowy teeth around the faint glow of its soul somewhere in the dark of its existence; and then it surges higher, spreading up to what must be its full height in an attempt at intimidation that falls flat before it’s begun. It stands far taller than it seemed to before, its head vastly overtops their own; but they are one, meister and weapon in a single entity, and there’s no space for fear in the strength of the connection binding them together.

 _Now_ , they think, a statement and not an order, and they swing themselves forward, shoulders and arms and hands and weapon all part of a single consciousness, a single identity strong and solid and unflinching. The weapon impacts the center of their enemy’s body, the blow knocks the thing back and stumbling away; but tendrils lance up and out of the darkness, catching to seize around the glow of the weapon and dimming some of its light. They hiss, a gust of air past gritted teeth, past the strain of Miles’s jaw; and Phoenix gasps, and reaches out again with desperate force to clutch at that connection between them as it shudders and starts to fracture.

 _No_ , he shouts,  _no no no_ Miles _I need you, I_ need _you_ ,  _Miles!_  He gasps a breath, trying to regain traction on the situation, trying to hold to his transformed state as the shadows wind around him, as the Kishin egg pulls against him like it’s trying to detach him from reality, from himself, from Miles -- and the grip on Phoenix’s handle tightens, there’s a gasp against the inside of his head, and the connection stabilizes once more, snapping into place like it’s locking them together into the single form they’re meant to be. They breathe out a rush of air, emptying their lungs of that brief surge of panic; and then they steady their grip on the handle of the weapon as much them as their physical body, and brace their feet against the forest floor, and let the surge of stability that courses through them spill out and into the weapon half-covered by shadow. There’s a burst of light, rays as of sunlight spilling up and out of the web of darkness wrapping around their weapon; and then a  _crack_ , a sound like wood slamming down on wood, and the shadow recoils, hissing a high note that rises out of audibility and fades away to nothingness. The darkness before them disintegrates, unravelling like yarn pulled loose of a fraying sweater, and for a moment they’re left as they are, glowing from every point of their existence with a light too brilliant to be contained in the dark of the forest and gazing down at the flicker of the red soul left exposed by the collapse of the Kishin egg. The light wavers, surges higher for a moment; and then fades, easing back to dark as the one entity they are shifts into two, as they let the connection between them go to become themselves once more. Phoenix disentangles himself from Miles’s awareness, pulling back and free of the shared control he had over the other’s movements, and by the time he’s fitting back into the smaller shape of his gavel form it’s all his as well, the weapon given over to his keeping as much as Miles is left to guide himself. Fingers tighten against him, a reflex Phoenix can’t place the owner of; and then Miles’s hand eases, loosening on Phoenix’s weapon form, and Phoenix draws himself up and away to shift out of his transformed state and back to his human body.

It’s harder than he expected, tricky to remember quite how the different parts of his consciousness fit together; but it’s his own self, after all, he doesn’t need perfect clarity to complete the motion, and if he’s shaky on his feet at least there’s a tree immediately adjacent to him to catch his weight as he stumbles sideways to lean heavily against it. Phoenix takes a breath, blinks hard in an attempt to clear his vision of the sunspots that came with that surge of Resonance; and in the midst of the hazy darkness a hand closes at his shoulder, fingers tighten hard against him, and at his ear a voice: “ _Phoenix_ ,” straining so hard on adrenaline Phoenix can barely recognize Miles’s tone under the word.

“I’m okay,” Phoenix says, still trying to bring his vision back from the haze of darkness that’s eclipsing his sight. “We won, right?” He sounds congested, like his nose is stuffed; it’s hard to breathe, as if he’s half-underwater. “Are you alright?”

Miles huffs a breath that sounds like he might be on the verge of laughter, but his hold on Phoenix’s shoulder doesn’t ease at all. “I’m fine,” he says, his answer making the question sound like a truly ridiculous one. “Can you see at all?”

Phoenix shakes his head. “No,” he says, and the word sounds actually wet, this time, like he’s talking through a mouthful of water. “It’s still really…” and then there’s a spill of liquid against his mouth, a surge of heat washing over his skin, and he breaks off in surprise. “What…?” He lifts a hand to touch against the wet, feeling his forehead crease on confusion; but Miles is hissing, and it’s Miles’s fingers that touch him first to weight against the heat spilling across his mouth.

“Your nose is bleeding,” Miles’s voice says, clear and businesslike; his hand at Phoenix’s shoulder lifts, his fingers catch to brace at the back of the other’s head instead. “Tip your head back.” Phoenix obeys, more because Miles’s hands are pushing him back than from any independent decision to do so, and Miles takes the weight of his head, holding it back at a sharp angle while he presses sticky fingers in against the bridge of Phoenix’s nose to stem some of the flow of blood.

“Sorry,” Phoenix says without moving away from the certain weight of Miles’s touch against him. The word comes out strained against the sharp angle of his throat. He can taste the tang of blood on his tongue. “I’m getting blood all over you.”

“Only you would apologize for a nosebleed,” Miles says, his tone desert-dry and his touch unflinching. “You won the fight, that’s what’s important.”

“ _We_  won the fight,” Phoenix corrects, his voice wet but certain. “Both of us.”

Miles heaves a sigh. “Yes,” he says, sounding immensely put-upon. “We won the fight. Now hold still and stop talking.”

There’s no particular reason speech should interfere with the ability of Phoenix’s blood to clot, but he obeys anyway, breathing slowly through his mouth while Miles’s hands brace against him. He can taste iron on his tongue, can feel blood drying sticky against his upper lip and gluing Miles’s touch against his skin, but he doesn’t try to pull away, even as his vision comes back into focus to show him the canopy of the trees overhead and the dark, saturated blue of the night sky. The moon is half-hidden behind a branch, the white glow of it halved by the dark line; Phoenix fixes his attention on it and watches the slow shift of the light as it moves across the sky like it’s tugging itself free of the branches.

By the time Miles eases his hold, the moonlight is falling unobstructed over them both.


	19. Grow

Miles is in the living room when Phoenix gets out of bed.

This isn’t a surprise. Miles moved in over a week ago, as soon as the partner switch between the four of them was officially recorded; Phoenix had been expecting the process to take longer or be far more painful, but in the end it was simply a matter of Miles arriving mid-afternoon with a few boxes and the delivery schedule for a bed apparently more suited to his tastes than the standard-issue ones the Academy provides. It took Maya far longer to move out entirely; it’s only in the last few days that she’s stopped coming by at the lunch hour and in the evenings to pick up another store of books she had ferreted away or to lay claim to a decoration or a picture frame Phoenix can’t assign an owner to. But she’s reclaimed most of what she decided was hers, at least enough to spare them unexpected visitors, and in the meantime Miles has settled himself into comfort, returning to the everyday pattern of Phoenix’s life as if he had never really left. It’s reassuring, on some level, to have him back and so suddenly everpresent; but on the other hand, Phoenix isn’t sure he’ll ever get used to stumbling out of his bedroom and into the living room to find Miles in a sweater sipping tea from the edge of a china cup.

“Hey,” Phoenix manages, sounding like there’s gravel in his throat and feeling like there’s sand in his eyes. He pauses in the entrance to the hallway so he can lift a hand to rub at his eyes in a mostly-futile attempt to wake himself up enough that this doesn’t feel like one of the more absurd of his dreams. “Morning.”

Miles turns immediately on the couch, twisting to fix Phoenix with so much focus so quickly Phoenix feels a little like a criminal being pulled up before a judge and jury. “ _Phoenix_ ,” he says, and he’s setting his teacup back against its saucer as quickly as he unfolds to his feet to come around the edge of the couch. “What are you  _doing_?”

Phoenix blinks. “Getting up?”

“You should be in bed,” Miles informs him as he closes with Phoenix, his forehead knit onto a crease and his mouth drawn down on a frown. He lifts a hand to weight at the other’s shoulder, his hold certain enough that Phoenix can feel the warmth of Miles’s hand through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. “You’re still recovering.”

Phoenix snorts inelegantly. “From a  _nosebleed_ ,” he clarifies. “There’s nothing to recover from, I stopped bleeding before we even made it home.”

“As far as you know,” Miles corrects him, his frown deepening as if to underscore his point. “We don’t know what other injuries you might have sustained. If you’re feeling up to the travel I’d like to take you into the infirmary and make sure there’s nothing worse we don’t know about.”

Phoenix rolls his eyes towards the ceiling. “Sure, if you’re doing the same.”

Miles huffs frustration, as Phoenix knew he would. “Wright,” he says, his tone condescendingly patient, as if he’s speaking to a very young person who doesn’t yet realize how foolish their words really are. “I’m a  _meister_.”

“And I’m a weapon,” Phoenix tells him, in a poor but recognizable imitation of the other’s tone. “We were both out there in that fight together, if I need a checkup so do you.”

“You were being wielded,” Miles tells him, his grip tightening at Phoenix’s shoulder as if to demonstrate. “That’s a fundamentally different experience than being the wielder.”

“I was  _wood_ ,” Phoenix insists. “You were in as much danger as me.”

“I’m your  _meister_.”

“I’m your  _partner_ ,” Phoenix fires back. “Jesus, Miles, I’m not going to drop dead from one measly fight!”

He realizes what he’s said as soon as the words are past his lips, even before the blood has drained from Miles’s face and the tension at his mouth has given way to wide-eyed shock. Phoenix flinches back from the look in Miles’s eyes, from the expression the other is wearing as if Phoenix had just slapped him full across the face, and when Miles’s hand at his shoulder loosens Phoenix reaches to grab against the other’s fingers before Miles can let his touch fall away entirely.

“I’m sorry,” he says, speaking quickly so he can rush through the words for Miles’s sake before silence gives his statement a weight he didn’t intend. “I didn’t mean that, I wasn’t thinking, I--” and then understanding unfolds in his mind, some part of preestablished knowledge sliding to slot in against the white-faced horror in Miles’s expression, the shock that is throwing him back over years to childhood again, and Phoenix loses his breath at the same time his hand tightens to clasp around Miles’s fingers.

“Oh,” he says, sounding shocked and feeling more so. “Your dad.” He takes a breath, feeling like everything he’s ever known about Miles is turning over on itself, is showing a side Phoenix never saw before, that has always been there but hidden in shadows where he couldn’t find it. “He died in a fight with his meister.” Phoenix’s hand tightens on Miles’s fingers as if he’s bracing the other still, as if he’s trying to hold the other where he is before Miles can pull away again, before he can back away and disintegrate into a memory the way he did when they were children. “That’s why you wanted to be a meister, so you wouldn’t have to be a Death Weapon.”

“I became a meister so I could  _protect_  my weapons,” Miles says, his voice grating over emotion sharp enough to pull speech from his lips in spite of that bloodless horror still so clear across his face and dark in his eyes. “No partner of mine is going to--” and he closes his mouth hard, pressing his lips tight together on whatever he left unsaid while spots of color rise against his cheekbones. His eyes meet Phoenix’s for a moment, his forehead ceasing hard on emotion, and then he looks down and away, ducking his head behind the fall of his hair before Phoenix can decide if it’s anger or misery so heavy behind the other’s lashes.

Phoenix stares at the fall of silver in front of Miles’s face, at the smooth curtain of hair shining like precious metal in the dim lighting of the living room; and then he fills his lungs with breath, and asks “Is going to what?” as gently as he can.

He thinks for a heartbeat that Miles isn’t going to answer, that the question hanging in the air is going to go as unanswered as that  _why_  he offered to the silence of Miles’s abandoned room those years in the past. But when Miles moves it’s only to close his free hand around his opposite elbow, to cross his arm protectively across his chest as he tips himself in rather than dragging his fingers free of Phoenix’s hold, and when he takes a breath Phoenix can hear the catch of emotion on the sound even before Miles has framed it into speech.

“No one’s going to die to protect me,” Miles says, still with his head turned so Phoenix can’t see the details of his expression, can’t see anything but the shadow of his hair and a glimpse of his hard-set mouth. “I’m not going to let anyone be a shield for me.”

Phoenix lets his breath out in a rush, feeling the tension in his throat pull the air into almost a sob by the time it leaves his lips. “Miles,” he says, and he’s shifting his hand without thinking, loosening his grip on the other’s fingers so he can bring his own around and fit them in against Miles’s. Miles’s grip on his arm tightens, his hands presses in hard against his sleeve; and against Phoenix’s hold his fingers flex very slightly, his thumb shifts to press against Phoenix’s knuckle.

“I don’t want to die for you,” Phoenix says. “I just want to be your partner.”

Miles huffs an exhale. It might be a laugh, it might be a choked-off sob; Phoenix can’t tell, the less so when Miles ducks his head so his hair falls the rest of the way over his face, but it doesn’t make a difference in the moment anyway, as Phoenix lifts his free hand, and takes a half-step in, and reaches to catch the strain of Miles’s shoulders under the weight of his arm as he pulls the other in against his chest. Miles tips forward under the force, his body weighting hard against Phoenix’s shoulder as Phoenix tightens his grip, and he doesn’t let his hold on his arm go but neither does he draw his hand loose from where his fingers are tangled with Phoenix’s. He just stands there, letting Phoenix hold onto him while he keeps his face tipped down to hide his expression, and Phoenix leans into the not-quite hug, letting his shoulders ease in to bump just against Miles’s collarbones under the soft of his sweater, and he wonders when Miles grew taller than him.


	20. Alternate

It’s almost a week before they go out on their next mission.

Phoenix feels fine. He’s insistent about this, reminds Miles on a daily basis that he’s feeling great, that he’s ready anytime the other is; he even submits to the physical exam Miles continues to push for, only to emerge with a bill of perfect health thorough enough to ease some measure of the crease Miles has taken to carrying against his forehead like a physical weight. But Miles procrastinates in a way Phoenix has never seen him do before, filling his days with a variety of increasingly mundane tasks instead of going to the mission wall, and Phoenix wants to complain but he can’t really find true frustration for his voice, not when he’s aware of the painfully intense concern that is so underlying Miles’s delay. And besides, there’s a pleasure to the simple comfort of living together, of coming home in the evenings to Miles drinking a late-night cup of tea while he reads a book, to cooking something experimental based on the leftovers in the fridge and getting takeout when those attempts fail, and Phoenix doesn’t mind the idea of lingering like this for weeks, or months, or forever, even, with his life and Miles’s blurring at the edges to spill over and into each other until it’s impossible to tell them apart. By the time Miles does come home with a mission in hand from the headmaster himself Phoenix is almost disappointed by the interruption to the domesticity he’s been adjusting to with far more grace than he ever found in his struggling pursuit of becoming a Death Weapon.

He doesn’t give voice to that, of course. He doesn’t think Miles would want to hear it in any case -- he’s rapidly collecting a list of things Miles doesn’t want to hear -- and there’s no point anyway. He set himself on this path of his own volition years ago, and even if that initial decision was Miles’s doing it’s become Phoenix’s own goal since, become enough a part of who he is that even Miles coming back a meister instead of a weapon isn’t enough to shake him. By the time they go out to find the target of their mission Phoenix is ready to face it without any hesitation at all, until he’s not concerned about what Miles might hear amidst his thoughts as he transforms and settles himself into place against the steady grip of the other’s hand on him.

He doesn’t have anything to worry about, as it turns out. Miles is entirely silent from the moment his hold closes on Phoenix; Phoenix would think he was perfectly calm were it not for the fact that it is Miles, after all, and Phoenix has never known the other to understand even the most basic premise of calm. Far more likely that he’s keeping a wall up around his thoughts, blocking himself away to silence that their casual connection can’t break through, and Phoenix is left to reflect on that as they make their way through the city streets and towards the shadowy array of back alleys where their target was last seen. They’re nearly atop their goal when Miles takes a breath in reality, and tightens his hold on Phoenix’s handle, and out of nowhere:  _How many more Kishin souls do you need?_  with all the force of a demand in the back of Phoenix’s head.

Phoenix blinks. He’s been thinking about the fight to come, all his attention dedicated to the mission in front of them; to have Miles sudden ask what amounts to an administrative question is jarring, it takes him a moment to parse the meaning of the other’s words even though they amount to a straightforward question.  _Uh_. He collects his thoughts, sifts back through his memories of old fights, tallying up the souls he’s collected across a whole handful of meisters: the greater number with Mia, the dozens of minor quests he’s gone on with Maya.  _Just a few. Six, I think_.

 _Six_ , Miles repeats back, as if he’s considering the shape of the number in his mind, like he’s turning over the corners of it to inspect the fundamental meaning. There’s a pause, a breath of silence Phoenix thinks is more thoughtful than avoidant.  _I’ll be the one to make you a Death Weapon_.

It’s an obvious consequence of the statement. They’ve been successful enough as partners, after all; Maya wasn’t wrong about her decision, when she judged that they would be well-suited to work together. Given how cautious Miles is as a meister, and how easy it is for them to drop into Resonance together, Phoenix can’t imagine anything going so catastrophically wrong as to prevent the inevitable result of him reaching his long-held goal. But to hear the words stated overtly like that -- to hear them delivered with a sense of certainty akin to stating that the sun will rise the next morning -- is enough to knock Phoenix’s thoughts entirely out of their usual tracks, to leave him gaping silent shock in response to Miles’s statement.

Miles’s fingers tighten against Phoenix’s handle. Phoenix has never before been quite so aware of the intimacy of that connection, of the texture of fingerprints pressing hard against the smooth-polished wood he becomes; it’s strange to realize how warm Miles’s hand is, to realize that Phoenix can feel the soft thud of the other’s heartbeat like the roar of a far-off ocean against him. He can feel himself go warm with self-consciousness, can feel himself sliding away from that thought even knowing it’s too late, that Miles must have heard at least some portion of what he was thinking; and then Miles says, “There it is,” in such a calm tone that Phoenix is jolted back out of his thoughts with a speed that is more a relief than otherwise, under the circumstances.

Their opponent is obvious, as soon as Phoenix looks for it. It’s a long, spidery thing, pressing in against the side of a building but glowing faintly with inner light, as if its usual haze of shadow is insufficient to fully eclipse the illumination of the corrupted soul it carries within it. It flinches back as Miles steps forward, hissing in a high, brittle range like nails dragging over a sheet of glass; it makes Phoenix flinch, even within the buffering distance of his weapon form, but Miles doesn’t so much as slow the forward pace of his stride.

“Come on,” he says, aloud again, like he’s speaking as much to hear his own voice as for Phoenix’s benefit; and then he lifts his hand, and lifts Phoenix before him, and Phoenix can feel the glow of Resonance start from that point of contact between his handle and Miles’s grip. It’s a spreading heat, like sunlight soaking into winter-cold skin, or like the dawn breaking through gaps in heavy cloud cover, and there’s a familiarity to it, now, something Phoenix can breathe through and melt into without having to think about the action at all. Miles is there, and Phoenix is there, the two of them leaning in towards each other in the shared space of their thoughts; and then they’re not there anymore, or not there as themselves, as the line barring one from the other melts and disintegrates. There’s a wall that crumbles to sand, a barrier giving way like fog before that spreading warmth; and a second surge of feeling, like a wave breaking free of the dam that once held it back to wash affection out and into the single identity they’ve become. Their chest is tight on emotion, their throat knotting around the rhythm of their breathing; they shut their eyes, and take a breath, and let it out slow, steadying themselves in place before they take up the next step of striding forward and towards that shadowy corner.

Their opponent ducks away at once, vanishing from view behind the corner of the alley, but it makes no difference, not really. There’s nowhere for it to run to, with the back end of the alley to hold it in place; they can move slowly, steadily, advancing around the corner of the street and pressing forward with the glow of their body and their weapon to light their way. They can almost sense the area around them, as if their awareness of the world is expanding from its usual confines to spill out along with that incandescent glow, like their self has grown too large to be captured within the space of their human body and the heavy weapon gripped in their hand. They wonder, distantly, if it would be possible to do this with two people at once, with the additional complexity of another human shape instead of a weapon; it ought to be feasible, after all, group resonance necessarily brings multiple people into a single connection. How overwhelming might it be, they think, to have the feedback from two bodies at once, to have touch bleeding over into sensation as rapidly as it is offered; but it’s a distant thought, and a distracted one, and they have more important things to focus on right now.

The shadow before them is cringing back, shuffling down the alley with a faster pace than they can entirely follow; but that just makes it hit the back wall the faster, gives it time to flatten against the space like liquid before it comes forward again, reforming itself as it moves to take on a more human shape, with visible legs and arms forming in advance of the head. It takes a moment to work itself through the motion, as limbs shift in ways they weren’t meant to and the head cranes hard to the side with a stomach-churning motion; and then they’re stepping forward, and the figure before them is straightening, and in the middle of that featureless head a gap is opening, a mouth forming itself to offer words that come clear as they draw back for a swing forward.

“You should have looked behind you,” it says, the corners of that shadowed mouth pulling up onto a grin; and then their hammer swings down in a heavy blow, and the shape is knocked sideways hard against the side of the alley before they can stop the motion. There’s a surge of adrenaline through the whole of their being, energy like electricity crackling with all the force of understanding as the Kishin egg’s words coalesce into comprehension; and it’s then that the glow of the streetlight behind them dims, the gold obscured by the shape of something interposing between them and it, and  _there were two_  is the last coherent thought they have together before Resonance gutters out like a blown-out candleflame. It’s together that they hit the first enemy; and it’s Miles who turns his head, who tips to look up at the shape looming over them while Phoenix is still finishing out the arc of his first movement in the other’s grip.

 _Fuck_ , Miles thinks, the thought distinct and crystalline at the edges, like it’s ice forming instantly over the warm ease they had a moment ago. His hold at Phoenix’s handle loosens, his fingers relaxing like he’s thinking of dropping the other; and Phoenix shouts, a desperate note of panic as he feels even the minimal connection between them shudder and fracture apart.

 _No!_  He’s still caught in the inertia of that first swing, still carried forward as if the force of his heavier weapon form is gripping him too tightly to let go even if the link with Miles has wholly evaporated in the intervening time. Miles is off-balance, his feet angled for that first swing and his footing all wrong for any kind of a retaliation against the shadow rising to block any hope of escape; and he’s about to drop Phoenix, he’s going to let any attempt at self-preservation go as soon as his fingers slide away from the wood of the other’s handle.  _Miles, don’t you_ dare _leave yourself alone!_

 _I can’t attack_ , Miles thinks, and there’s no anger on the words, not even the heavy weight of bitterness turned inward to tear at the seams of his own sense of value. It’s just a statement, a true fact, and Phoenix can feel the accuracy of it in the whole of his own unstoppable motion, in the swing of Miles’s grip still caught in that first all-in attack.  _I’m off-balance, there’s no time. I can’t hit with you._

 _Fine_ , Phoenix tells him.  _Then let_ me _attack_  and he lets his weapon self go as Miles’s fingers slip away from him, as their mental connection severs with the loss of the contact. He’s still falling, still carried forward on that slow-motion sweep of an attack; but he’s dropping into his human form, now, catching himself with the skid of his shoes against the pavement as the glow of transformation illuminates his body with the brilliance of his natural form.

He doesn’t know if Miles heard him. He doesn’t know if Miles understood what he meant, much less if the other will be willing to make the admittedly reckless attempt at a counterattack. But he’s sliding to a stop, catching himself from falling by dropping hard onto a knee as his feet try to slide right out from under him, and as the creature in front of them raises an enormous hand to swing down into an attack Phoenix reaches up with both hands towards the angle of Miles’s turned-away shoulders, towards the outline of the other’s body. The glow fades from his skin, easing back into the dim illumination of the nighttime city; and it rises to Miles’s, spilling out over the other as if Phoenix’s transformation has given him back the ability to achieve his own. Phoenix sucks in a breath, his eyes going wide as Miles glows with suddenly brilliant light; and then the shape of his meister collapses in on itself, disintegrating before his very eyes, and Phoenix closes his hands tight around the handle of the revolver before him at the same moment the weapon comes clear to his sight.

Phoenix doesn’t know how to use a revolver. He doesn’t know how to wield a weapon; he’s never so much as tried, in any of his practice classes or in the field. The last time he picked up another weapon it was dead weight, Gumshoe as useless to him in that moment of horrified panic as if he had been nothing more than the length of metal he technically is. But Phoenix doesn’t have to think, with this, doesn’t have to know how to do any of what he’s doing; it’s natural, as easy as breathing, as easy as the glow that surges out from his hands around Miles’s weapon form to blind him with radiance. He’s Phoenix Wright, his hands bracing close against the smooth metal of the revolver Miles becomes; and then he’s not, he is, he’s Phoenix and he’s Miles and they are one and the same, settling into place without reaching for it at all, and they’re lifting the gun in their hands, and drawing back the hammer at the same time they take aim, and squeezing down hard on the trigger as the shape in front of them hisses and starts the downward sweep of its hand. The gunshot  _cracks_  loud in the space of the alley, the sound knocking their hearing out of commission as thoroughly as the illumination around them has undone their vision; and the expected blow never lands, the rush of unconsciousness never comes for them. They’re gasping for air, filling their lungs with the acrid bite of smoke and the cool of the night around them; and then there’s a soft slumping sound, like a blanket sliding off a line to collapse on itself, and some measure of the street comes back into clarity as the shape before them melts into the dark of the pavement.

They stare for a moment, their gaze dazzled to monochrome by the effect of too-much light too quickly; and then the glow fades, the light recedes, and Phoenix fits back into the space of his own body as the weight of the weapon in his hands slides away and dissolves into brilliance again. He lifts a hand, this time, blocking himself from the glow in an instinctive attempt to preserve his slowly returning night vision, and then the light eases, and Phoenix lets his hand fall, and when he looks back up Miles is standing there staring at the crimson of the Kishin soul before them on the pavement. There’s another one behind them, the remains of their first opponent flickering fitfully in the dark of the alley; but Phoenix keeps staring at Miles, keeps watching the other until Miles lifts his head to meet his gaze.

There’s a whole host of things that should be said. Apologies, maybe, or thanks, more likely; maybe just relief, a huff of a breath and the easy curve of a smile to indicate shared happiness at their continued existence. But the adrenaline-fast beat of Phoenix’s heart isn’t slowing, and his breathing isn’t easing, and in the end they just stand still as they are, staring at each other in silence while the darkness of the night settles heavy and warm around them both.


	21. Nostalgia

“Aw man, this is crazy!” Larry exclaims, gesturing so expansively over the space of the table that Phoenix has to tip back from the surface just to avoid the swing of the other’s hand. “I never thought we’d all be here together again after Edgeworth left!”

“What exactly did you expect?” Miles asks without looking up from the menu he’s been frowning at since they sat down. “That I would disappear into the ether?”

“I dunno,” Larry says, without any indication whatsoever of noticing the bite of sarcasm on Miles’s tone. “You just left, I didn’t think you were gonna show back up.”

“I did,” Phoenix says without thinking, and then immediately regrets it as both Larry and Miles turn to look at him. Larry’s eyes are wide, his expression a picture of surprise; Phoenix doesn’t dare turn his head to see the way Miles is looking at him. He ducks his head over his menu and clears his throat carefully. “I always thought Miles would come back someday.”

“Woah,” Larry breathes, sounding awestruck. “Really?”

“I should have expected as much,” Miles says, so softly Phoenix is sure Larry isn’t meant to hear it and isn’t completely sure even he is supposed to catch the words. When Phoenix glances sideways at him Miles is looking back at his menu, his head ducked down so he can fix the rows of text with the absolute attention he brings to something when he’s trying to not look at something else. “You always have had more optimism than is healthy.”

Phoenix can’t hold back the smile that pulls at his mouth. “Yeah,” he says, aware even as he agrees how fond his voice sounds and how little he cares about trying to hide it. “I guess I do.”

“Really though,” Larry says, his voice loud enough to cut right through Phoenix’s brief forgetfulness of the world other than Miles himself. Larry’s considering at his menu too, when Phoenix looks at him, idly skimming over the options while he reaches one-handed for another slice from the basket of bread set at the corner of the table. “It’s so weird to have the three of us together again. It’s just like old times, you remember?”

Phoenix smiles. “Yeah,” he says. “When you were the only meister in the NOT class with two weapons working with you.”

“And when Edgeworth got that crazy idea to move up to EAT,” Larry says, sighing heavily and shaking his head over his menu. “We all got pulled into that madness together.”

“ _You_  didn’t,” Miles says, and actually looks up from his menu to give Larry a flat look across the table. “Aren’t you still in the NOT class today?”

“Sure am,” Larry says, without a hint of the remorse Phoenix is fairly sure Miles would prefer to see from him. Larry tips back in his chair, leaning hard against the back of it as he lifts his hands to fold behind his head and grins self-satisfaction at the other two. “I’m a veteran meister, the new weapons always fight over who gets to be my partner.”

Phoenix bites his lip to keep from laughing at this claim. “Do they?”

Larry nods. “You bet. You should see how many pretty girls I have after me with each new school term!”

“And yet you remain in the NOT class,” Miles observes with clinical accuracy. “Haven’t they noticed your utter lack of ambition?”

Larry waves a hand to sweep aside this accusation. “It’s not ambition they want,” he grins. “They just want to have a fun time with a nice meister. Not everyone is as uptight as you are.” His attention slides from Miles to Phoenix sitting next to him. “Though you sure got to Phoenix. I thought for sure he’d give up on transferring once you left but he refused to budge.”

Phoenix can feel his face heat with self-consciousness. “I decided I was going to,” he says, and reaches for his glass to down a mouthful of water. “I wasn’t going to back out of my promise.”

“You could have,” Larry says with painful honesty. “ _I_  did. We were all supposed to become EAT students together, right?” He takes another slice of bread and bites off half of it at once before continuing to speak around the mouthful of food. “After Edgeworth left you didn’t even know anyone else in the class to work with.”

“It was fine,” Phoenix says. “It was worth it. I decided I was going to become a Death Weapon and I still am.”

Larry whistles. “Damn,” he says, shaking his head as he downs the remainder of his bread and reaches for the last piece in the basket. “You’re the most determined of us all.”

“Huh?” Phoenix blinks. “What are you talking about?”

“He means me,” Miles says, suddenly. Phoenix looks over at him at once, responding to the sound of the other’s voice as if it’s a summons; but Miles is looking down at his menu again, fixing his attention to the title at the top as he reaches out to touch against the script with a careful finger. “I didn’t become a Death Weapon like we promised either.”

“Oh.” Phoenix blinks. “You became a meister instead, though.”

“Good thing too,” Larry puts in, still in that chipper voice that shows no indication at all of noticing the somber tone that has descended on the other side of the table. “Otherwise Phoenix would still be meister-hopping like he did all the rest of the time he was in EAT.”

“Hey,” Phoenix protests, his attention pulled sideways once more by this claim. “Larry, after how many partners  _you’ve_  had--”

“Phoenix just can’t find a good match for himself,” Larry says, sighing heavily and acting like he doesn’t hear the other’s words at all. “It’s a good thing you  _did_  become a meister, Edgeworth, I don’t know who he would have partnered with otherwise.” He reaches out for the display of specials at the end of the table, drawing it in so he can flip through the selection of pictures on the pages within. “I think he just would have just gone on pining on his own forever.”

Phoenix’s face heats, his cheeks flush into embarrassment. “I wasn’t  _pining_ ,” he protests without looking to see if Miles is watching him. “I was moving forward with my life.”

“Sure,” Larry agrees. “You were just also totally convinced that  _he_ \--” with a broad gesture towards Miles at Phoenix’s side, “--was going to magically reappear if you waited long enough.” He looks up from the specials to consider Miles for a long moment, blinking like he’s surprised to find the other still there before he shrugs himself into acceptance. “I mean, I guess he did, in the end.”

Phoenix looks at Miles next to him, his attention drawn unavoidably to the other by Larry’s words. Miles is watching Larry, his head lifted and gaze fixed, but he turns as fast as Phoenix does, as if there’s a mirror between them to make their movements an echo of each other. Miles’s expression is completely unreadable, from the wide attention at his eyes to the soft give of his mouth; but he meets Phoenix’s gaze, and holds it for a long second before he presses his lips tight and ducks his head to return his attention to his menu. Phoenix keeps looking at him for a moment, startled into noticing Miles’s presence all over again by Larry’s offhand comment, into noticing the near-impossibilities that have led them back here, to this moment, the three of them together in an echo of the way they used to be when they were children; and finally he looks away too, blinking down at his own menu without really seeing it at all.

He has no idea what he wants by the time the waiter comes by to take their order, but he doesn’t mind. It’s not the thought of food that has a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, after all.


	22. Sincerity

The witch is far, far faster than Phoenix was expecting.

“Good god,” Miles pants, leaning against the edge of the building where they’ve paused so he can fill his lungs with air and brace himself to stillness for a few moments of recovery. “She’s a monster.”

 _That is sort of the idea_ , Phoenix agrees, feeling vaguely guilty for his own relative comfort as the weapon clutched in Miles’s hand while the other gasps for air as if he’s been running a marathon. He  _has_  been running, sprinting down alleys and around corners as part of the desperate pursuit they’ve been locked in since they first caught a glimpse of the telltale crimson hair they’re after, and while Miles is hardly out of shape it’s true that his usual preferred fashion sense is far from suited for this kind of all-in physical chase.  _I could transform, you know, if you wanted to--_

 _No_ , Miles says, framing the word clearly inside his thoughts where it won’t be affected by his continuing struggles for air.  _Then we’d both be exhausted, that hardly solves anything._

_At least you wouldn’t have to carry me._

That gets a snort of laughter from Miles, a ripple of amusement that runs warm through the back of his thoughts.  _You’re hardly a terrible burden, Wright_ , he points out, and lifts the gavel from his side to gesture as if to underscore his point.  _Just stay as you are, you’ll need to be fresh when we do catch up to her_.

Phoenix sighs hard, deliberately loudly so he can be sure the emotion carries clearly to Miles before him.  _You know_ I  _could always carry_ you _, for a while at least._

There’s a beat of silence, a heartbeat of quiet even in the shared space of their thoughts. Miles’s hold on Phoenix’s weapon form tightens, his thumb braces hard against the smooth wood of the other’s handle. Phoenix is expecting Miles to change the subject, to push him back and away from the too-much intimacy of the conversation the way he so often does; but:

 _No_ , Miles says, and he doesn’t sound angry as much as thoughtful, like he’s truly giving the suggestion some consideration. Phoenix’s skin prickles warm with self-consciousness.  _This is your fight, for you to become a Death Weapon._

Phoenix turns that over for a moment.  _And if it was your fight?_

Miles’s grip shifts.  _It’s not_ , he says, simply, without giving voice to the  _yet_  still too half-formed for it to quite merit active speech.  _We’re going to get through this one first_.

Phoenix grins, more pleased by this near-capitulation than by anything Miles is overtly agreeing to.  _Yes sir,_  he says, snapping the words in the closest imitation to Gumshoe he can manage.  _Let’s go take her down_.

 _Eloquent as ever_ , Miles tells him, his tone so soft it nearly sounds tender; and then he takes a breath, and moves forward again to resume the chase.

It takes some time. The city streets are dark and close; it’s hard to see anything at all, even the shapes of familiar shops around them go strange and looming in the dim of the night unilluminated by even the glow of the moon overhead. But Miles keeps going, his jaw set and his breathing hard but rhythmic, and Phoenix keeps his attention around them, expanding himself as far as his transformed self can reach to feel into the darkness of the shadows in search of an existence closer to theirs than the occasional mouse or insect wandering the streets. He stretches into doorways, against the edges of windows, into the dark fringes of the shadows that fall under burnt-out streetlights; and then he finds something, a hiss of an inhale coming fast with exertion and muffled back to an attempt at quiet, and he flinches back, the response too immediate and involuntary for him to even think through his response. He realizes a moment later that he should say something, that he should offer some explanation; but Miles is moving before Phoenix can fit words to his thoughts, tipping forward and dropping into an all-out run without anything as coherent as a sentence passing between them. It’s an instant response, as if Miles is some extension of Phoenix’s thoughts or maybe the other way around, as if they really are sharing a single existence even now, even without the glow of Resonance to give them away, and Phoenix doesn’t know if that thought is carried over their mental connection but he doesn’t care even if it is, not when the whole of his awareness is pressing such warm happiness into his existence.

They catch up to the witch around the next turn. Miles is moving with startling speed, almost skidding as he takes the corners faster than he safely ought to; it’s like their proximity to their goal has given him refreshed energy as well, or maybe it’s just that he’s seeing the end of the fight, maybe that he’s motivated by his expectation of the conclusion so rapidly approaching. Or maybe it’s the witch who’s tired, whose energy has finally given way enough to let them catch up to her; she certainly seems tired, from the pant of her breathing as Miles and Phoenix close with her. Her shoulders are shifting visibly with each inhale, her head is ducked down into the shadow between one streetlight and the next; the wind catches at a strand of her hair to wind it up and around the back of her neck. She looks like a perfectly ordinary girl, like she’s been running from a monster instead of being one herself; it’s enough to flicker something like discomfort into the back of Phoenix’s mind, to knot the weight of unpleasant guilt low in his stomach even as Miles draws level with their opponent, slowing the speed of his chase now that she’s clearly done running.

 _This isn’t the time for sympathy_ , Miles tells Phoenix, offering the words into the quiet between their shared awareness rather than aloud to the witch’s hunched shoulders.  _She’s a witch. You know what that means._

 _I know_ , Phoenix agrees; but his stomach is still churning with adrenaline more unpleasant than otherwise, and he can’t stop it regardless of what he attempts.  _It’s fine. I can handle it._

 _I hope so_ , Miles says; and then he begins to glow, his body illuminating from the inside out with the brilliance of Soul Resonance, and Phoenix shuts his eyes and lets himself give way to the rush of connection that spills through them both. The light washes over him, Miles’s conviction and certainty strong as a rock even as they fit to lie smooth alongside Phoenix’s own perspective; and then they are his own, they’re fitting into place in his psyche, in  _their_  psyche, as their awarenesses slot together and spread out to become a greater whole. They open their eyes again, blinking past the all-in awareness that comes with Soul Resonance, that makes their consciousness spread out beyond the simple boundary of their human form, as if it’s being carried on the light glowing around them as much as by the focus of their eyes, and in their hand their weapon part gains weight and form, steadying itself into the true shape it always has, underneath, that solid stability that always hides beneath the surface of smooth-polished oak. They lift the hammer, the weapon and their arm moving as a single cohesive entity, and when they close their second hand on the grip alongside the first they can feel the connection like electricity touching down against a battery, as if the extra contact is sufficient to surge the energy in them yet higher, to coruscate into the air around them as if their very presence is throwing off sparks of light to illuminate the night. The weapon comes up, their hands tighten on their handle; and the witch turns, gasping an inhale and lifting her hands as part of the same gesture.

“Don’t!” she exclaims, her voice breaking high and pleading as her hands come up, as her chin comes down. “It’s not me, I’m not the witch!”

They’re moving already. It’s the inertia, the downward force of the blow carrying it towards the girl before them before they have thought of it, while they’re still bracing themselves for the violence of the action they are obligated to perform. But in the glow of their Resonance the girl’s hair is clearly visible: black, dark like ebony shining under their shared light, far from the blood-red of the witch they’ve been chasing. The blow is falling, the weapon is swinging towards her; and Phoenix jerks himself away bodily, shattering himself out of Resonance the fastest way he knows how, by dropping physically out of his weapon form and into humanity. Miles gasps a breath like he’s been punched, Phoenix’s mind bursts with a stab of pain like a migraine compressed into a single horrible moment; and he falls, collapsing on top of the girl in front of him and knocking her flat to the ground beneath them. It’s an ungraceful landing, heavy enough that she loses her breath and Phoenix cringes for the hurt he might have done her; but it’s better than the weapon would have been, at least, that much he’s sure of even as his thoughts reel between the competing factors of pain and confusion.

“Sorry!” Phoenix starts, trying to struggle for clarity as he pushes himself up off the ground to free the girl he’s just knocked to the pavement. “Who--”

“ _Where_ ,” Miles cuts in, lashing the word like a whip against his tongue, with force enough that Phoenix flinches from the edge of it. He looks to the girl, wondering if she’s even conscious after hitting the pavement; but she’s pushing upright, even as she grimaces in pain and lifts a hand to touch gingerly against the back of her head.

“My sister,” she says, the words heavy even as she ducks her head so Phoenix can’t see her face. She takes a breath, the sound catching in her throat as she presses her hand to the back of her head; it sounds like a sob on her tongue. “Dahlia. She’s--”

“ _You_ ,” a voice rasps, and the girl’s head comes up, her eyes going wide with horror in answer to that tone. Phoenix lifts his head, looking back down the street at the same time Miles does; and there’s the witch, standing between the three of them and the main street, her head tipped up and her hair spilling around her shoulders like a cascade of blood. “Iris, you  _traitor_.” And she steps forward, her teeth bared and her fingers tense as the shadows around them collect around her, sweeping themselves into a cloak to absorb and wrap around the dress that is a perfect match for the other girl’s.

Phoenix doesn’t say anything. Phoenix doesn’t have to say anything. Miles doesn’t turn his head, doesn’t so much as gasp a breath of warning; but Phoenix is moving without that, surging to his feet and reaching out his hand as quickly as Miles’s form melts and disintegrates into the rush of illumination that comes with a weapon transformation. Phoenix’s fingers close on metal, Phoenix’s thumb braces into certainty; and Phoenix lifts Miles’s weapon form, and aims the revolver at the shadows of the approaching witch, and squeezes down hard on the trigger beneath his finger. The gun goes off with a  _crack_ , recoiling with a jolt Phoenix can feel run down the whole of his arms; but Miles is spreading into him as rapidly, his wavelength spilling down Phoenix’s arms and up to curl in around the glow of the other’s awareness. Phoenix gives way at once, lets Miles take over the grip of the gun and the complexities of aiming, and then they’re firing as one, they  _are_  one, a single entity as much now as they were when their hands were tight around the handle of the hammer instead. They fire once, twice, a third time, the shots coming in quick succession and clustering close around the vital points of the shadow surging towards them, hissing rage at each attack and disintegrating out of humanity with every motion; and then she’s atop them, rising high to fill the space of the street with the cascade of scarlet that her hair makes and the flashing white of her bared teeth, and they shift, trading one form for another with as much casual grace as either of their component identities trade weapons for humanity. They don’t even drop out of Resonance; it’s like a full-body transformation, every part of them shifting smoothly from weapon to human, from body to hammer, their fingers catching and interlacing for a moment as their transformation sweeps out over them. The hammer weights their hold, their weapon settles into the brace of their grip, and they move at once, as part of the same motion, to bring the weight of it around to slam into the shadow before them. The shape recoils, hissing in a cacophony of sound that grates over octaves of range at once; and they step forward, and swing again, bringing the arc of the hammer in and around towards the same place the bullets pierced on their first attack. The shadow flinches back, withdrawing sharply in a desperate attempt at retreat; but they’re taking a step forward, pressing their advantage without regard for the range of the tendrils reaching to wind around them, and the hammer cleaves through smoothly, separating shadow from itself to leave a clean line of illumination running through the middle of the shape. There’s a screech of sound, bone-rattlingly low before rising to a piercing shriek that digs into their Resonance like it’s trying to claw them apart, like it’s trying to tear them to pieces; but they just grit their teeth, and tighten their grip, and the sound skids up and away out of audibility, diminishing and vanishing into the silence of the night as the shape before them folds in and collapses into itself. They take a breath, the dragging sound of their inhale the loudest noise in the quiet street; and then they let go, and unwind into themselves, and Phoenix fits back into the space of his weapon form as Miles resettles his grip against the other’s handle.

They’re very quiet for a moment. The whole street is silent; there’s nothing but the sound of Miles’s breathing in the darkness, nothing in Phoenix’s head but the echoing peace of relief that comes with the end of a battle. The last shreds of shadow are disintegrating before them like ash, collapsing to the pavement and dissolving as if in an unfelt wind, until all that’s left is the glow of the soul before them, a deep, saturated purple that pulses slightly like the beat of a heart. Phoenix thinks about eating it, thinks about the feel of that light on his tongue and the weight of it sliding down his throat, and for a moment he can’t decide if he’s more excited or nauseated by the prospect.

 _Not yet_ , Miles says, responding to Phoenix’s unvoiced thought with a clarity that says he’s still tangled up in the other’s subconscious, still picking out details from Phoenix’s awareness more accidentally than deliberately conveyed.  _Wait until we’re back_.

 _Right,_  Phoenix agrees; and then, with a weight to the words that carries his own hesitation clearly:  _What are we going to do about her?_

Miles turns to look back over his shoulder. The girl is sitting on the pavement where Phoenix knocked her, her knees tucked under her and her head ducked down over her clasped hands. She’s not making any move to get up, to retreat or to draw closer; she looks like a picture of passivity, like she’s ready to submit to whatever justice they mete out upon her.

Miles heaves a sigh into the space between their thoughts.  _Looks can be deceiving, Wright_.

Phoenix rolls his eyes.  _Calm down, Miles. I’m just making observations._

 _Be careful about your conclusions_ , is all Miles offers; but he’s stepping forward all the same, straightening his shoulders and lifting his chin to cast himself into the haughty facade Phoenix hasn’t seen from him in months. “You.” The girl lifts her head up to meet his gaze but doesn’t move at all otherwise; it’s for the best, Phoenix thinks, he’s not sure what Miles would do otherwise. “You’re not a witch.”

The girl shakes her head, her eyes going wide as she gazes up at Miles. “No.”

Miles tightens his hold on Phoenix. “What are you doing with one? Be careful what you say, your words will be held against you.”

The girl’s head ducks down, she looks at her clasped hands. “She’s my sister.” Her shoulders hunch up, her head comes farther down. “We’re twins.”

 _Iris Hawthorne_ , Miles’s thoughts murmur. Phoenix has the flickering image of a sheet of paper printed over with notes, the case file on the witch that Miles reviewed with the headmaster before they left. “You were presumed dead.”

The girl, Iris, shakes her head without looking up. “I left,” she says to her hands. Her fingers shift, her grip tightens. “When Dahlia did. I went with her.”

Miles’s eyebrows go up. “She was expelled from the Academy for pursuing magic. Why would you choose to go with her?”

Iris takes a breath and lets it out in a rush. “She was my sister,” she says, and then she lifts her head and her eyes are clear, her gaze unflinching even as a tear breaks over her lashes to slide down her cheek. “No matter what she did, no matter how bad she became. She was my sister.” She ducks her head again and struggles over a breath. “I couldn’t leave her alone.”

There’s a moment of quiet, the stillness of the night unbroken except by the soft sound of Iris’s inhales, the catch of her breathing forming into sobs in the back of her throat. Miles stares at her, his hold tight on Phoenix’s handle; Phoenix can feel the strain in Miles’s shoulders, can sense the glow of the witch’s soul behind them as clearly as he can hear the misery of the girl crying before them.

 _We won_ , he says, feeling a little forlorn.  _Shouldn’t there be...I dunno, confetti or something?_

Miles’s exhale in his thoughts sounds like a sigh and feels a little like a whimper.  _There’s never been before._ His hold on Phoenix tightens, loosens.  _It’s always like this, in the end._

Phoenix considers, for a moment: the sound of the girl’s crying, the tension building in Miles’s shoulders as he watches her. And then he slides away from Miles’s hold, drawing free of the other’s grip so carefully that by the time Miles is catching a breath of shock Phoenix is halfway through transformation anyway, forming himself into his more usual shape and stepping forward while Miles is hissing and reaching out to grab at his sleeve.

“It’ll be okay,” Phoenix says, his voice clear and carrying in the quiet of the alley; and he’s coming in to kneel in front of the girl, reaching out to weight a comforting hand at her shoulder as she lifts her head to look up. Behind him Miles is growling incoherent concern, his fingers closing to a fist at the back of Phoenix’s shirt as if to draw him back by force, but Phoenix doesn’t lift his hand from Iris’s shoulder. “It’s not okay now, but it will be.” He tightens his hold for a moment to press his fingers into what comfort physical contact can offer. “I promise. Things will turn around for you.” He reaches for a smile, struggling to find the shape of it; and against his shoulder Miles’s fingers tighten, his hold steadying as much for himself as for Phoenix, and Phoenix huffs a breath, and manages a sincere smile in spite of the weight pressing against his chest.

He knows how helpful a smile can be.


	23. Feel

The sun is rising by the time they make it back to their apartment. There was more to do at the Academy than expected; Iris had to be brought in, and the headmaster roused from his bed, and the whole messy situation explained at enough length that Phoenix more than once found himself wondering if it wouldn’t be better to let Iris get some rest before they sorted everything out. But academic proceedings wait for no one, apparently, and the whole process of bringing up the old records and sorting out precisely what had happened with the sisters in the intervening years was done right there on the spot, with the headmaster yawning over the task while Phoenix and Miles stayed standing to give Iris the benefit of the single chair in front of the headmaster’s desk. The witch’s soul was handed over, to be held as evidence until the whole mess was sorted out, and Iris was ushered to one of the Academy cells, ultimately, after many apologies from the headmaster and reassurances that the lodging is as comfortable as involuntary confinement can be. Even then Iris was nothing but calm, willing to follow anyone who led her with submission so clear it’s hard to match her to the monster her sister had become; it leaves Phoenix feeling strangely guilty, as if he has done more harm than good in bringing Iris back to the Academy. He thinks about it during the whole walk back, down the stairs at the front of the school and along the winding streets to bring he and Miles back to their home; he’s so lost in his own thoughts that he doesn’t realize he hasn’t spoken until Miles clears his throat as he turns the key to unlock their front door.

“It’s not your fault.”

Phoenix looks up at once, startled out of his reverie by the sound of Miles’s voice. Miles isn’t looking at him; he’s pulling the door open and stepping forward into their apartment, moving with a calm intention as if he hadn’t said anything at all. Phoenix follows him, reaching to take the weight of the door from Miles’s hold as they step inside, and Miles pauses in the entryway to kneel so he can untie his shoes and work them free of his feet. Phoenix steps in far enough to let the weight of the door swing shut behind him and the latch of it click into place, and Miles goes on speaking, his head ducked down as he works on the laces of his second shoe.

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” He gets to his feet, straightening before he steps free of first one shoe and then the other; when he looks back at Phoenix it’s with his chin lifted on certainty, his expression clear and steady as if he’s a rock Phoenix can ground himself against. “You’re a weapon of the DWMA. It’s your job to defeat witches and make the world a better place.”

Phoenix grimaces. “I’ve only ever fought monsters, before.”

“That’s what you were doing this time too.” Miles’s voice is perfectly level, his gaze unflinching; he doesn’t even blink as he stares at Phoenix, doesn’t duck away and hide his face like he so often does when it’s just the two of them alone. “The fact that it looked like a person doesn’t make it any less destructive.” Phoenix flinches, remembering for a moment of too-much clarity the shape of the girl standing at the end of the street, her form identical in almost every detail to the sister they left behind them in the care of the DWMA; and a hand closes at his shoulder, fingers tightening against him with so much certainty that Phoenix loses his breath in a rush as he looks up to see Miles stepping in towards him.

“ _Phoenix_ ,” Miles says, and Phoenix is looking at him, is seeing him, is aware of nothing else except Miles leaning in closer towards him, his forehead creased and his mouth drawing down on a frown of intensity. “Listen to me.” His other hand comes up to Phoenix’s other shoulder, his hands catch and brace the other to stillness; Phoenix feels his shoulders bump against the shut door behind him, his weight tipped back by the intensity of Miles’s motion, but he doesn’t look back. He isn’t sure he could look at anything other than Miles right now.

“You did well,” Miles says, his hands tightening on Phoenix’s shoulders as if to drive the point home. “The fight with the witch is always the hardest. They don’t  _look_  like monsters.” His thumb slides against Phoenix’s shoulder, his grip braces against the other’s skin. Phoenix can feel the heat of Miles’s touch right through the fabric of his shirt. “That was a monster. You won. If you hadn’t you and I and Iris Hawthorne would all be dead.” Miles’s hold loosens, some of the strain eases from his expression. When he blinks his eyes soften, the color of them flickering from steel to silver in the span of a breath. “You were a hero tonight, Phoenix.”

Phoenix can’t breathe right. His throat is tight, his breathing sticking hard in his chest; he feels like he’s trying to breathe underwater, as if every inhale goes sideways to stall and cling to his ribs. He presses his lips together, blinks hard, swallows harder. “We.”

Miles’s lashes flutter. “What?”

“We won.” Phoenix lifts his hand to Miles’s hold against his shoulder; his fingers slide against the cuff of the other’s coat, his touch settles into place against bare skin. He can feel the beat of Miles’s heart against his thumb. He huffs a laugh, has to bite his lip to hold it back from breaking into the edge of hysteria. “It wasn’t just me.”

Miles rocks back on his heels, looking suddenly uncertain, like he’s forgotten how to understand basic language. “You were doing the fighting.”

“ _We_  did the fighting,” Phoenix says. His hand is sliding up against Miles’s, his fingers are curling in against the other’s; he doesn’t even have to think about the action, doesn’t have to spare any attention at all for what he’s doing. “You did as much as I did.” Miles blinks, his expression shifting like clouds scudding across the sky, until Phoenix thinks he could almost read the other’s mind from the shift of his lashes, from the tension at his mouth. There’s something of surprise, something of sadness, something of hope so fragile and delicate it looks as much fear as anything else; and Phoenix can feel himself going warmer, can feel the shell of guilt and unhappiness cracking and giving way as he watches Miles watching him, as his fingers tighten to clasp tight around Miles’s hand in his.

“We did it together,” Phoenix says again, tasting the words on his tongue, feeling them slot in against his mind like Resonance, like the honesty of them is enough to fit into the core of who he is and give his uncertain feelings foundation to stand on. He tries on a smile, feels it fit and settle against his mouth like it belongs there. “I’m going to be a Death Weapon, Miles.”

Miles’s lashes dip, his mouth tightens and shifts; Phoenix can hear the breath he takes, can hear the catch of it at the back of Miles’s throat. There’s a crease against the other’s forehead, a tension at his mouth; he looks like he’s maybe going to cry, or like he’s struggling to wrap words around the shape of whatever it is he’s feeling. “Phoenix.”

Phoenix huffs an exhale that comes out harder than he means it to, dragged ragged past the tension rising in his chest like helium, like the whole of his self is straining around painless tension he can’t put a name to. “I love it when you do that.”

Miles’s chin comes up, he blinks hard on surprise. “What?”

“When you call me by my name.” Phoenix’s heart is pounding and he doesn’t know why, his breath is coming faster around some emotion he can’t define, grief and joy and guilt and gratitude all together in him until he wonders what his own expression is, wonders if it’s a mirror for those too-clear emotions so obvious on Miles’s. He smiles to grant his words some measure of sincerity, but no sooner does his mouth curve up than his eyes start to burn, than his throat closes up on the threat of tears.

“I love that,” he manages, hearing his voice go shaky with emotion he can’t restrain, can’t even pretend to hide. His pulse is racing, his hands are shaking; he wonders if Miles can feel it where their hands are clasped together, wonders if Miles can read his feelings as clearly in his expression as he can see them in the other’s. Phoenix presses his lips together and swallows hard, pushing the tension back in his throat so he can force words past his lips to clarity. “I love you, Miles.” His breathing sticks again, comes out as the hiccuping beginning of a sob; he chokes it back and strains for another breath of air. “I’ve loved you for so long.”

Miles stares at him for a moment: his eyes wide, his mouth slack, even his shoulders hanging heavy with shock. Phoenix can feel the pressure against his chest like a weight, as if setting those words free at last has left him unable to hold up the crush of self-consciousness desperation held at bay for a moment. Miles’s hold on his hand loosens, his fingers slide free and away; and Phoenix wants to clutch at them, wants to hold Miles here, but he’s never been able to keep Miles where the other didn’t want to be, and he doesn’t want to start now, if Miles wants to turn and leave. Phoenix hiccups a breath and closes his fingers in against his palm with the resignation to having said too much, of having pushed too far; and Miles lifts his hand, and takes a step in, and his fingers are sliding against the back of Phoenix’s neck before Phoenix can process what’s happening, his touch settling in to brace the other steady instead of holding onto his hand. Phoenix blinks, his breath catches, and then Miles is leaning in, and Miles’s mouth is pressing against his, and the whole world goes calm and still and radiant. Phoenix’s heart is still racing, somewhere in the distance of his awareness, Phoenix’s throat is still tight on that knot of unidentified emotion; but Miles Edgeworth is kissing him, is fitting his lips to Phoenix’s with the same graceful ease that they slip into Resonance, and for a moment everything else in the world fades out of importance in comparison to that one simple fact. They’re both still for a moment, Miles’s lips warm against Phoenix’s, Phoenix’s mouth pressing flush to Miles’s; and then Miles draws back, carefully, so slowly Phoenix can feel the friction of the other’s motion draw against his lips, and Phoenix blinks as Miles takes a careful, deliberate inhale.

“I’m sorry,” he says; and then his voice catches, and gives way his facade cracking and opening as his forehead creases, as his chin dips down. “I’m sorry I left.”

Phoenix lifts his hand from his side carefully, uncurling his fingers into the open offer of his palm as he does so. His touch slides against Miles’s cheek, his hand fits under the fall of the other’s hair; he can feel the tremor in his fingers steady and still as it grounds itself out against the line of the other’s neck.

“I’m glad you came back,” he says, his lips curving up on a helpless smile; and then he’s turning his head up, and Miles is leaning in, and their mouths are coming together again with all the careful friction of an old friendship fitting back into familiar paths, of two strangers finding themselves in each other’s memories.

It’s the easiest Resonance Phoenix has ever found.


	24. Fit

The bed is empty when Phoenix wakes up.

He’s in it, of course, still tangled into the mess he’s made of the sheets over the course of the evening and with the blankets wound around his legs to trip and catch any movement he might make to stillness; but the other side is absent its occupant, the blankets pulled to smoothness and the pillows settled back into place until they don’t show so much as the indentation of their owner’s head. It was discomfiting, the first time this happened, to stir to consciousness and find Phoenix’s expected company absent with nothing but hotel-tidy lines to hide that he was ever there at all; by now Phoenix barely blinks at the situation, barely has a flicker of uncertainty before experience catches up with the present and tells him what has happened. He rolls over, struggling himself free of the sheets and tipping himself to sprawl out over those neat lines, those tidy creases; and when he presses his face down into the pillow beneath him he finds it’s less coldly distant than it appears. There’s a softness at the far edge, the give of the pillow worn to comfort by the habitual weight of the head upon it, and there’s something a little bit spicy clinging to the cloth, shampoo or soap or maybe some faint trace of cologne from those rare occasions Miles comes to bed without taking a shower to rinse himself clean of such effects. Phoenix shuts his eyes for a moment, lets himself drift in comfort while he breathes in the smell of Miles’s skin yet clinging to the pillow; and then he stirs himself, and braces a hand against the mattress under him to push himself upright so he can pull free of the blankets and get to his feet to make for the shut bedroom door.

Just because he knows where Miles is doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to see him, after all.

Phoenix can see the light from the living room as he opens the door to the bedroom, the illumination from the lamp soft and gold and gentle as it always seems, first thing in the morning. The air is warm in spite of the wintery chill Phoenix knows will be clinging to the air outside, heated to comfort by the turned-up thermostat Miles always insists on and catching the smell of tea that promises the other’s presence even before Phoenix has made his way down the hallway to the living room. Miles is there, of course, where he always is, settled onto one end of the couch with his shoulders precisely straight and an open mission file in one hand while he sips from a steaming cup of tea; he looks like he could have been there for hours, as if he’d be perfectly comfortable to remain there for hours more. Phoenix pauses at the edge of the hallway, watching the way the light clings and shines against the fall of Miles’s hair over the back of his neck, appreciating the elegant angle of Miles’s fingers bracing at the handle of the teacup; and then Miles leans forward to set his cup atop his saucer, and says, “Are you intending to stand there all day, Wright?” with an edge on his tone that is so dry that he very nearly sounds sincere.

Phoenix grins at the back of Miles’s head and shifts to lean hard against the wall next to him. “I dunno,” he says, and grins the wider as Miles tips his head to look back over his shoulder at him, over the top edge of the reading glasses he’s taken to wearing whenever he’s around the house. “I don’t want to upset your morning routine.”

Miles rolls his eyes. “I was waiting for you to wake up,” he says, and leans back against the couch to offer the open mission file. “This is for you.”

“A gift?” Phoenix says as he straightens and reaches to take the file. “Miles, you shouldn’t have.”

“I didn’t,” Miles says. “When I give you a present it’ll be better than a mission assignment.” He turns back towards the coffee table in front of him and reaches for the cup left empty on the other corner of the table; Phoenix smiles and looks down at the file, skimming over the information as he comes forward to make his way around the edge of the couch while Miles is handling the apparently complex process of pouring a second cup of tea.

“This doesn’t look that bad,” Phoenix says, lifting the first sheet of paper so he can glance over the second as he drops onto the couch alongside Miles still fussing with the teacups. “Is the headmaster going easy on us with this one?”

“It’s not as straightforward as it looks,” Miles says without looking up from spooning sugar into the second cup and stirring it to dissolve into the heat of the liquid. “This one has shown a strong tendency to prefer close combat, which is hardly going to grant us an advantage.”

Phoenix scoffs and waves a hand. “I can handle it if we need to.”

“You shouldn’t  _have_  to handle it,” Miles tells him. “It’s my mission, what kind of a success would I be if my partner had to deal with the witch for me?” He picks up the cup and saucer in front of them and offers them to Phoenix as he reaches to retrieve the case file from the other with his free hand; Phoenix gives up the documents and accepts the beverage instead, bracing the china between both hands instead of attempting to imitate the casual one-handed grace Miles shows with the unbalanced saucer.

“I’m going to be there with you anyway,” Phoenix counters. He considers the teacup and saucer for a moment before leaning forward so he can set them against the edge of the table and buy himself the freedom to actually pick up the cup without worrying about dropping the whole thing on his lap. “It’s not like you can wield yourself.” He tries a sip of the tea; it’s good, from what he has come to know about tea secondhand via Miles, but it’s still so hot he can’t taste much difference in it other than the heat burning his tongue and turning to steam in his throat. “Besides, I seem to recall you taking some shots at  _my_  witch soul.”

Miles huffs. “Don’t be pedantic, Wright.”

“Don’t dodge the point,  _Edgeworth_ ,” Phoenix fires back, setting his teacup down against the saucer again and looking sideways at Miles next to him. Miles has his head down and is gazing with apparent absolute focus at the files in front of him; it would be a very convincing display of attention if the corner of his mouth wasn’t tugging on the threat of a smile, if he didn’t have his jaw set like he’s trying to hold back a laugh.

“I’m sorry,” Miles says, lifting the page before him to squint consideration at the one below it. “What  _was_  the point again?”

“You’ll go blind doing that,” Phoenix informs him, and reaches out to pull the top page back down over the file Miles is pretending to read. “Then you’ll have to wear those glasses all the time.”

Miles raises an eyebrow and glances sideways at Phoenix. “I thought you said you liked the glasses.”

“I do,” Phoenix says immediately. “They make you look dashing.”

Miles’s eyebrow goes higher. “That sounds quite old-fashioned.”

“Just take the compliment,” Phoenix tells him, and that smile breaks free at last, catching into a huff of a laugh that warms the whole of Miles’s expression at once. He ducks his head over the file once more but it’s only to flip the cover shut and set it aside on the couch next to him before he’s turning back to meet Phoenix’s gaze and lifting his chin so he can toss his hair back and out of his face.

“You never answered my question,” he says, lifting his arm to drape over the back of the couch along Phoenix’s shoulders. “What precisely was the point you were trying to make?”

Phoenix smiles, letting himself lean back against Miles’s arm across his shoulders as he reaches out to lay claim to the other’s hand lying slack across his lap and wind his fingers in with the other’s. Miles lets him do so with no protest at all, without even a flicker in the quirk of his smile as he looks at Phoenix’s face. Phoenix settles their hands together and interlaces his fingers with Miles’s; and then he looks up, and flashes a grin at the other without hesitation. “We’ll get a witch’s soul for you too. Together, however we need to do it.”

Miles snorts. “You’re very blasé about it.”

“I just have faith in us.” Phoenix leans in to bump his forehead against Miles’s. “Between us we can take on anything.”

Phoenix can feel Miles’s mouth curve on a smile, can see the bright of it catch in the other’s eyes. “Where did you pick up that optimism, Wright?”

“I learned it,” Phoenix says immediately. “Weapons need to be able to support their meisters.” He lifts his chin fractionally, just enough to bump his nose against the other’s. “That goes for you too, you know.”

Miles’s laugh spills warm over Phoenix’s mouth from how close they are. “Are you making demands as my meister, Phoenix?”

“That’s right.” Phoenix lifts his chin farther, until his lips bump the corner of Miles’s mouth, until he can feel the other’s breathing tangling in against his own. “I’d find a kiss very supportive right now, for example.”

Miles laughs again, a spill of sound too reflexive to even attempt to restrain; and then he lifts his hand to catch at Phoenix’s neck, and lifts his mouth to press gently against the give of the other’s lips.

It’s never been so easy to fit together.


End file.
